Software Engineer

This role is hybrid based in San Jose/Milpitas office.

Meet the Team

Join the Catalyst Center Customer Engineering team, which investigates complex software issues affecting customers and helps drive them to resolution. The team works across Cisco support, product engineering, and other partner groups to reproduce issues, identify root causes, and deliver fixes or workarounds. Its work helps restore customer operations while bringing product insights back to engineering. You’ll have opportunities to apply AI and automation to analyze logs, telemetry, and case data, speed up troubleshooting, and identify patterns that can improve the customer experience.

Your Impact

Investigate complex customer escalations by analyzing software behavior, logs, traces, and code to identify root causes and determine next steps. Reproduce issues in lab environments and develop code fixes, diagnostic tools, or workarounds to resolve customer problems and prevent recurrence. Partner with development, test, and support teams to validate solutions and communicate clear progress through resolution. Use patterns from escalations to recommend product improvements that strengthen reliability and the customer experience.

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in computer science software engineering, computer engineering, or a related field and 5+ years of professional software or a Masters and 2+ years

• Experience reading, debugging, or modifying code in production software
• Experience with Linux operating systems and operating Kubernetes or containerized microservices
• Experience with networking or TCP/IP fundamentals

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience debugging distributed data stores, including PostgreSQL and MongoDB.
• Experience supporting or resolving complex customer escalations for enterprise software.
• Experience reproducing software issues in lab or test environments.
• Experience applying AI, machine learning, or generative AI tools to analyze logs, telemetry, traces, or case data, automate troubleshooting, or improve engineering workflows.
• Experience developing diagnostic tools or automation, and communicating technical findings across engineering, support, and product teams.

Why Cisco?

At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era - and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint.

Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere.

We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.

Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada:

Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks. Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.

U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:

• 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees

• 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco

• Non-exempt employees** receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees

• Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)

• 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to the next

• Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members

• Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer

For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.

Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan. For quota-based incentive pay, Cisco typically pays as follows:

• .75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;

• 1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;

• 1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and

• Once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.

For non-quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.

The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:

New York City Metro Area:

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

* For quota-based sales roles on Cisco’s sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.

** Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.