Senior Director - Engineering

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

The application window is expected to close on: Feb 15th, 12 PM ET 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 Security Business Group (SBG) is at the forefront of developing solutions for addressing the security challenges of our customers. With an annual revenue exceeding $2B, it is one of the fastest growing businesses at Cisco. As Cisco is transforming its business model aggressively to a software and recurring revenue model, security business is leading this journey with 40%+ YoY growth in software recurring revenue.

The Cloud Security group within SBGfocuses on developing cloud delivered security solutions (SaaS based) in a platform centric approach. This group is an autonomous group within the business group and operates like a Startup to nurture innovation in a highly disruptive and high growth domain. Our vision is to build the most complex security solutions in a cloud delivered way with utmost simplicity - disrupt industry's thinking around how deep and how broad a security solution can be while keeping it easy to deploy and simple to manage. We are at an exciting stage of this journey with 100% YoY growth, and looking for a passionate, innovative and action-oriented engineering leader for our Product Engineering group to help us scale our business.

We have a highly scalable cloud infrastructure spread across 40+ data centers where we run our cloud security applications that operate at massive scale - 100B+ requests per day from 65M daily active users.

Your Impact

We're looking for a Senior Director of Engineering for the DSPM team. In this role, you will lead innovation and new product development initiatives keeping customer outcomes as our true north by partnering with cross-functional teams. You will work closely with Product Management and Design teams to deliver simplified user experience that will drive product adoption and business success. Your role will involve building a high-performing organization culture that will scale as Cisco Secure Access grows.

• Successfully lead cultural, architectural, user experience, and software delivery transformations to achieve business goals.
• Partner closely with Product Management to help identify and drive revenue generation initiatives through outstanding customer outcomes.
• Identify and execute SSE and SASE innovations for differentiated customer experiences and outcomes.
• Define and carry out regular reviews of engineering metrics for predictable and repeatable delivery of value to customers.
• Create an effective, measurable sustainability initiative (e.g., NPS or equivalent programs) to lead customer retention and NRR goals.
• Lead an agile software engineering culture with sustained and frequent delivery of value to customers and instill a culture of frugal and innovative thinking, customer centricity.
• Recruit and nurture the strongest security talent in the industry.
• Demonstrable understanding of the SASE and SSE space and experience with building traffic acquisition, CASB, SWG, DLP, ZTNA, and cloud Firewall services or similar technologies in networking.

Minimum Qualification:

• Over 15 years of experience in leading product development teams, demonstrated expertise in architecting and building SaaS systems.
• Demonstrable understanding of the SASE and SSE space with building traffic acquisition, CASB, SWG, DLP, ZTNA, cloud firewall or similar services.
• Experience leading teams developing cloud-native security products and a strong background in modern software development practices (CI/CD, DevOps, Agile).

Preferred Qualification:

• Strong problem-solving skills, analytical ability, and a pragmatic approach to solving business problems in engineering.
• Expertise in security with the ability to explain technical concepts clearly to business leadership and customers.
• Proven ability to drive customer satisfaction.
• Track record of growing talent and building high-performance engineering teams.
• Ability to lead from the front and willingness to be hands-on when necessary.

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 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:

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.