Principal Engineer - Silicon One Software

The application window is expected to close on 07/25/2025.

Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.

Meet the Team

Cisco Silicon One is the center of Cisco's ASIC design and is driving the development of next-generation network devices for the 5G and AI era. Our outstanding team works in a startup atmosphere within a stable and leading corporate environment, and our design center hosts all silicon Hardware and Software development fields under one roof.

Our devices are crafted for universal adaptability, delivering high speed without sacrificing programmability, buffering, power efficiency, scale, or feature flexibility. The Cisco Silicon One team develops breakthrough silicon products. Our team develops the full software stack enabling the Silicon One network processors.

We work with the Open Standards community and our incredible customers to deliver best in class routing and switching platforms. Work also with architecture and design teams to define the next generation of ASIC products being developed.

You will work multi-functionally with ASIC teams, customer engineering teams to understand and prioritize features, capabilities.

These platforms play a key role in the emerging field of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. We work with subject-matter experts around the world who share a common mission to deliver extraordinary products and to have fun doing it.

Your Impact

You are a creative and skilled technical professional who excels at solving sophisticated problems. As a passionate innovator and self-starter, you turn strategic visions into reality.

Using your strong communication, empathy, and analytical abilities you collaborate effectively by listening, finding common ground, and working as a team to find the best product solutions. You have a high awareness which will guide you in generating trust with the customer. You are very organized enabling you to scale across multiple customer conversations well. You can piece together fragments of information and discover customer requirements that can guide our products to match these requirements.

• Close interaction with customers to gather requirements, explain system design, share timelines, address difficulties, questions, issues, help in adoption.
• Lead technical team to implement features that are aligned to customer expectations now and will address their expectation in the future.
• Collaborate with multi-functional teams, including Silicon One architects, software engineers and senior partners to ensure the alignment of Silicon One software initiatives and development work with business objectives.
• Lead the design and architecture of robust software systems, making design choices and deciding coding standards, tools, and platforms.
• Drive the adoption of standard processes in coding, testing, documentation and maintainability.
• Provide technical leadership by guiding and mentoring a team of Software Engineers, driving technical excellence in SDK/SAI API development.
• Design, develop, and maintain APIs that expose Silicon One capabilities to various teams, ensuring scalability, reliability, and ease of use.

Minimum Qualifications

• Masters degree in science, computer, electrical engineering, or related field; or 14+ years of experience in IT or Software Engineering field.
• Experience in the computer networking field and writing software in C, C++, and Python in a product area (ASIC). Experience debugging networking software.
• Prior work experience in L2 and L3 networking, platform solutions, topologies and interaction with higher networking layers.
• 7+ years of experience leading design and development of software systems.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience serving in the capacity of Principal Software Engineer or Director.
• Experience in building software stack for ASIC or similar network processors.
• Experience in network processor Interrupts and Error handling in SDK and Traffic Management is a plus.
• Ability to constantly identify, follow and learn innovative technologies, work in a fast-paced, team-focused environment.
• Experience mentoring peers at all levels.
• Experience with SONiC, SAI or another Network OS.
• Experience with cloud, data center, or edge networking products.

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. Simply put - we power the future.

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.