Senior Packet Core Engineer Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

The application window is expected to close on: 08/31/2026

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

This is a Hybrid position located in Milpitas, Ca. Ideally 3 days per week in office.

Cisco is building next-generation infrastructure software for enterprise AI factories, neocloud providers, sovereign cloud environments, and modern data center fabrics. These platforms must turn complex GPU, server, network, security, and DPU-enabled infrastructure into secure, multi-tenant AI infrastructure services that are simple to deploy, operate, observe, and scale.

We are seeking a hands-on Senior Software Engineering Manager to lead a team working at the intersection of systems software, Linux networking, DPU and SmartNIC acceleration, distributed security, infrastructure orchestration, observability, and production operations.

You will stay close to architecture, prototypes, technical risk retirement, design reviews, debugging, and quality decisions while hiring, coaching, and growing a strong engineering team. You should be comfortable moving between strategy and code-level detail, between customer outcomes and low-level systems behavior, and between innovation exploration and disciplined production execution.

Your Impact

• Shape the architecture and engineering direction for AI cloud infrastructure and DPU-enabled networking capabilities
• Lead a team responsible for core infrastructure software that makes high-performance AI cloud environments deployable, secure, observable, and supportable
• Participate directly in architecture reviews, design deep dives, prototype reviews, code reviews, debugging, and technical decision-making
• Drive platform capabilities across infrastructure lifecycle, host networking, tenant isolation, policy enforcement, service integration, health, telemetry, and operational workflows
• Evaluate emerging technologies, retire high-risk assumptions early, and guide pragmatic paths from prototype to production
• Make strong technical tradeoffs across performance, reliability, security, portability, cost, debuggability, and operational simplicity
• Build repeatable engineering practices for validation, automation, rollout, diagnostics, upgrade safety, and production readiness
• Build a climate of innovation where engineers simplify complex systems, question inherited assumptions, and turn hard infrastructure problems into reusable platform capabilities
• Hire, lead, mentor, and retain a high-performing team of technical leads, senior software engineers, and systems engineers
• Partner across engineering, product, hardware, firmware, security, operations, and customer-facing teams to deliver coherent platform outcomes

• Bachelor's degree + 15 , or Master's + 12 years of related experience with C/C++, Python, Go
• 5+ years of supervisory or management experience leading software engineering teams with consistent record delivering complex production software across multiple teams, functions, or product areas
• Experience running engineering teams in networking, systems software, distributed systems, security platforms, infrastructure software, or hardware-accelerated platforms
• Strong technical credibility, including the ability to participate in architecture, design, debugging, and implementation tradeoffs
• Experience leading ambiguous early-stage technical efforts from exploration through production readiness
• Deep understanding of Linux systems, host networking, packet processing, routing, policy enforcement, virtualization, containers, and production debugging
• Experience with distributed control planes, configuration systems, lifecycle management, and recovery behavior
• Familiarity with DPU, SmartNIC, NIC offload, NPU, ASIC, or hardware-accelerated networking architectures
• Experience with CI/CD, test automation, observability, performance analysis, health checks, upgrade safety, rollback strategy, and production support
• Strong understanding of secure development practices and security architecture for distributed infrastructure systems

• Experience with DPU or SmartNIC platforms, programmable packet processing, kernel bypass, hardware offload, or high-performance networking
• Experience with packet-processing and networking technologies such as VPP, DPDK, OVS, eBPF/XDP, tc, SR-IOV, VF/PF, P4 or P4-like pipelines, Kubernetes networking, CNI, routing, or virtual networking
• Experience designing or working with network abstraction interfaces, hardware abstraction layers, SAI-like APIs, SDK abstraction layers, or portable control-plane/data-plane interfaces
• Experience building or operating host networking platforms, cloud networking services, network security systems, SDN platforms, service meshes, or infrastructure orchestration platforms
• Understanding of AI/HPC cluster networking behavior, including RDMA/RoCE, congestion management, telemetry, failure diagnosis, and performance isolation
• Experience leading teams where the work required prototyping, technical discovery, architecture choices, and production delivery
• Automation or AI-assisted tooling to improve engineering velocity, quality, debugging, and operational readiness

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.

The starting salary range posted for this position is $210,600.00 to $305,100.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including incentive compensation*, equity, or benefits.

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 ofunused sick timecarried forwardfrom one calendar yearto 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:

$210,600.00 - $350,800.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$189,300.00 - $312,200.00

* 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.