Cisco Cloud Security Engineering is building the next generation of cloud-delivered security services that help customers securely connect users, devices, applications, and networks from anywhere. As part of Cisco’s Security Business Group, our teams design, build, and operate the cloud-native services that power Cisco Secure Access and Umbrella at massive global scale.

We are looking for a Senior Engineering Manager to lead the SSE Control Plane team for Cisco Secure Access. This leader will be responsible for delivering scalable, reliable, secure, and high-performance cloud services that support global enterprise users across Cisco’s security platform.

Cisco Secure Access is a highly scalable cloud product deployed across 100+ data centers, where we run cloud security applications that operate at massive scale. You will work across multiple stacks and domains to build platform capabilities, integrations, operational insights, AI-driven features, and control-plane services that power the next generation of Cisco’s cloud security portfolio.

This is a senior engineering leadership role for someone who combines strong people leadership, deep technical judgment, execution discipline, and an AI-first innovation mindset. The ideal candidate has experience building SaaS-based security products, leading distributed systems engineering teams, scaling cloud services, and partnering closely with product, architecture, field, and cross-functional engineering stakeholders.

Meet the Team

You will join the SSE Control Plane team within Cisco Cloud Security Engineering. The team builds and operates key control-plane services for Cisco Secure Access and Umbrella, with a focus on policy orchestration, tenant and service configuration, traffic steering, service enablement, operational insights, cloud platform integrations, and customer experience.

We are a collaborative team that values learning, experimentation, engineering excellence, and ownership. We work closely with product management, architecture, SRE, security, UX, field teams, and other engineering groups across Cisco to deliver secure, scalable, and customer-focused cloud services.

Your Impact

As a Senior Engineering Manager, you will work with the SSE Control Plane team and collaborate closely with leaders and teams across Cisco’s Security Business Group. Your partners will include product managers, architects, UX designers, SRE teams, security teams, field teams, customer support, and peer engineering organizations.

Together, you will deliver software and cloud services that meet or exceed customer expectations, support Cisco’s Secure Access strategy, and help shape the future of cloud-delivered security in the AI era.

You will:

• Lead, grow, and mentor a high-performing team of software engineers responsible for SSE control-plane and cloud security platform services.
• Own the design, delivery, quality, reliability, and operation of cloud-native microservices that support Cisco Secure Access and Umbrella.
• Drive delivery of both functional and non-functional product capabilities, including scalability, reliability, security, performance, observability, and operational readiness.
• Champion an AI-first engineering mindset, including the use of AI tools, AI-assisted SDLC practices, automation, and intelligent engineering workflows to improve productivity and product outcomes.
• Create a culture of execution excellence, innovation, accountability, inclusion, and continuous improvement.
• Partner with engineering leaders, architects, product managers, UX designers, SRE, security, field teams, and customer-facing stakeholders to define technology direction and facilitate key technical decisions.
• Translate product and business priorities into clear engineering plans, milestones, and measurable outcomes.
• Ensure engineering excellence through architecture reviews, design reviews, code quality practices, automated testing, CI/CD, DevOps practices, secure development, and operational best practices.
• Guide the team in building and maintaining scalable, reliable, and high-performance cloud services for global enterprise customers.
• Provide technical leadership on distributed systems, microservices, APIs, cloud architecture, data flows, service reliability, and production operations.
• Coach and develop engineers through regular feedback, career development, performance management, and growth opportunities.
• Recruit, retain, and develop diverse engineering talent while scaling the team to support a high-growth business.
• Represent the team in roadmap discussions, executive reviews, cross-functional planning, production escalations, and customer-impacting initiatives.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 15+ years of software engineering experience, including experience designing, analyzing, and troubleshooting large-scale distributed systems.
• 7+ years of engineering leadership or people management experience, including mentoring engineers, managing performance, and scaling engineering teams.
• Experience with AI tools, frameworks, methodologies, or AI-assisted software development lifecycle practices.
• Experience with full stack development
• Experience building cloud-delivered SaaS-based security solutions or large-scale cloud platform services.
• Strong technical depth in distributed systems, cloud-native architecture, microservices, APIs, service reliability, and production operations.
• Hands-on experience with programming languages Java, python
• Proven ability to manage a high-growth business area and scale engineering teams while maintaining strong execution discipline.
• Demonstrated ability to partner across engineering, product management, architecture, field, and other stakeholder organizations.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to influence technical teams, senior leaders, and non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in handling data at large scale
• Experience with anomaly detection pipelines
• Experience in security, networking, SSE, SASE, Zero Trust, SWG, ZTNA, CASB, DNS security, SD-WAN, or related cloud security domains.
• Passion for building scalable, reliable, secure, and maintainable backend systems.
• Experience with AWS, GCP, or similar cloud platforms.
• Strong engineering delivery and execution track record using Agile processes.
• Sound technical depth with the ability to go deep into architecture and design discussions when needed to solve complex problems.
• Experience operating business-critical, customer-facing services with high availability, performance, and reliability expectations.
• Experience driving operational excellence, including incident response, service health reviews, SLOs, post-incident learning, and continuous improvement.
• Strong business acumen and ability to connect engineering investments to customer value, platform outcomes, and business priorities.
• Collaborative, solution-oriented mindset with the ability to thrive in a fast-paced and dynamic environment.
• Track record of building inclusive teams, developing leaders, and fostering a culture of ownership, innovation, and continuous learning.

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.