Senior Software Engineering Manager, Security Core AI – Agentic SOC Platform (hybrid)

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

This is a hybrid role, requiring some on-site work weekly in our San Jose office

Cisco's Security Core AI team is building the Agentic SOC of the future at Cisco Security! 
Your Impact

As the Software Engineering Manager of the Security Core AI team, you'll lead a sizable engineering team creating trusted AI capabilities that help security organizations detect, investigate, and respond to threats. You will combine software engineering judgment, people leadership, and cross-functional execution to deliver capabilities across cloud, on-premises, sovereign cloud, and air-gapped environments in partnership with teams across Cisco and Splunk.

• Lead, coach, and develop a sizable team of software engineers, establishing clear expectations, accountability, and career growth.

• Translate Security Core AI strategy into practical roadmaps, staffing plans, priorities, and release-aligned execution.

• Lead delivery of shared AI capabilities for the Agentic SOC from requirements and architecture through integration, adoption, and improvement.

• Partner with security-domain teams to translate SOC, SIEM, detection, incident, investigation, and response needs into scalable engineering outcomes.

• Coordinate with product, architecture, deployment, quality, release, operations, support, and engineering partners to land capabilities end to end.

• Build strong relationships with Cisco and Splunk AI platform teams; evaluate shared technologies, drive adoption, and represent Security requirements.

• Balance near-term product commitments with convergence toward common platform, orchestration, and evaluation approaches.

• Guide delivery across cloud, on-premises, sovereign cloud, and air-gapped environments addressing residency, connectivity, deployment, upgrade, and resource constraints.

• Establish goals and metrics for delivery, AI quality, reliability, security, adoption, cost, and customer impact.

• Promote responsible use of AI tools throughout requirements, design, coding, review, testing, documentation, debugging, release, and production improvement.

• Hire, onboard, retain, and manage performance while building an inclusive, accountable, and continuously improving engineering culture.

• Coach technical leaders and senior engineers, delegate meaningful ownership, and build succession and growth paths.

• Resolve dependencies and priority conflicts, communicate trade-offs, and maintain stakeholder alignment as requirements and schedules change.

• Represent the team in planning, architecture, customer, and executive discussions.

• Bachelors + 10 years experience, or Masters + 7 years experience, or PhD + 3 years experience; all experience to be related to role.

• 4+ years of technical leadership or management experience in a software engineering or SOC environment

• Experience delivering and maintaining software in public cloud (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and/or on-premises or air-gapped environment. 

• Experience delivering large-scale distributed systems, AI platforms, or data-intensive services

• Knowledge of AI and agentic-systems with the ability to guide technical decisions, quality expectations, risk management, and delivery.

• Experience with SIEM, SOAR, threat detection, and/or incident response technologies and/or workflows

• Experience executing through complex partner relationships and adopting shared technologies across large organizations; Cisco or Splunk or experience with similar SIEM technologies is valued.

• Proven success scaling engineering practices, using AI-assisted development responsibly, mentoring technical leaders, and building high-performing teams.

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. 

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.