Software Microservices Platform Engineering Lead, AI & Agentic AI (Hybrid)

This role involves a hybrid work model, with a flexible in-office schedule that requires commuting to the Richardson, Texas office.

Meet the Team

Our DevNet team builds and runs the cloud-native services and AI capabilities that Cisco engineers, customers, and the wider developer community depend on every day. We take generative and agentic AI out of the demo stage and put it into production, where reliability and security actually matter. The team is a hands-on group of senior engineers who sit close to architects, product, and security, and who stay with their code from first commit through live operations. Nobody here hands work over a wall, and the person who builds a service is the person who keeps it healthy. Agentic AI is changing how software gets built, and this team is where those changes become real for Cisco.

Your Impact

• Build and operate secure, scalable microservice applications on AWS and Kubernetes, owning reliability and observability so that customers experience a platform that stays up under load.

• Develop and integrate AI and agentic capabilities, including LLM integration, retrieval augmented generation, tool and function calling, and agentic workflows, so that emerging technology reaches users as working product.

• Apply a security-first approach across development, deployment, and operations, covering application, API, container, identity, and data security, because autonomy raises the cost of any gap.

• Automate testing, delivery, and monitoring through modern DevSecOps practice, and troubleshoot complex production issues through to resolution rather than handoff.

• Success in this role looks like services you built running reliably in production, AI features customers actually use, and engineering practices that improve because you contributed to them.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelors and 7+ years of related experience, or Masters and 5+ years of related experience or PhD and 2+ years of related experience, or equivalent related work experience.

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience delivering production-quality applications using one or more of the following languages: Python, Java, Go, JavaScript/TypeScript, or C++.

• 3+ years of experience developing and operating microservices, REST APIs, or distributed applications on a public cloud platform such as AWS, GCP and Azure.

• 2+ years of experience deploying and operating containerized applications in Kubernetes in a production environment.

• 1+ years of hands-on experience building applications with generative AI or large language models, including work with retrieval augmented generation (RAG), embeddings, or tool and function calling.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

• Experience developing or integrating AI agents and agentic workflows in an enterprise setting.

• Hands-on experience with agent frameworks such as LangGraph, LangChain, or Semantic Kernel, and with Model Context Protocol or comparable agent-to-tool integration technologies.

• Experience implementing AI security, guardrails, governance, evaluation, or observability for AI systems.

• Track record of mentoring engineers, contributing to engineering standards, and collaborating across teams to deliver customer outcomes.

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.