Principal Engineer - Platform Engineering

The application window closes on: 09/11/2026.

Meet the Team

The Platform Engineering organization is responsible for building and operating the foundational cloud-native platforms that power engineering across Cisco Network Platform. Our team owns the Kubernetes ecosystem used by thousands of developers, spanning hundreds of clusters across public and on-premise environments. We provide infrastructure, automation, observability, security, and self-service capabilities that enable product teams to build and operate services reliably at scale.

We are a highly collaborative team of SREs who enjoy solving complex distributed systems challenges. Our culture emphasizes ownership, operational excellence, automation, and continuous improvement. This is an opportunity to shape the future of Kubernetes and platform engineering within Cisco Network Platform while influencing the experience of engineers across the company.

Your Impact

Architect and drive the evolution of Kubernetes platform strategy across cloud and on‑premises environments supporting mission‑critical workloads at scale.

Lead the design and implementation of platform capabilities that improve reliability, security, scalability, and developer productivity for hundreds of engineering teams.

Partner with engineering, security, and product leaders to define multi‑year platform roadmaps and drive execution of company‑critical initiatives.

Provide technical leadership during major incidents, architecture reviews, platform transformations, and strategic infrastructure investments.

Mentor senior engineers and help raise the engineering bar through technical leadership, design reviews, operational excellence, and architectural guidance.

Minimum Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience designing, building, and operating large‑scale distributed systems in production environments.
• 7+ years of hands‑on experience operating Kubernetes platforms in production, including multi‑cluster environments.
• Experience architecting and operating cloud‑native infrastructure across AWS, Azure, GCP, or hybrid cloud environments.
• Experience designing, operating, and troubleshooting networking architectures for large‑scale Kubernetes platforms, including CNI implementations, ingress and egress traffic management, service‑to‑service communication, multi‑cluster connectivity, and network observability.
• Experience with Infrastructure‑as‑Code and GitOps technologies, including Terraform and ArgoCD or equivalent platforms.
• Strong communication and leadership skills with the ability to effectively influence engineers, architects, senior leaders, and executive stakeholders.
• Proven track record leading cross‑organizational platform initiatives and influencing technical strategy across multiple engineering teams.
• Experience implementing SRE practices, including SLOs, incident management, production readiness reviews, and operational excellence programs.
• Strong software engineering experience with Go, Python, or similar programming languages used for automation and platform development.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with migrating monolithic applications to a microservices architecture.
• Knowledge of networking (switching, routing, Wi‑Fi, IoT).

Compensation and Benefits

Starting salary range: $231,400.00 to $331,800.00 (U.S. and/or Canada). Benefits include medical, dental, vision, 401(k) with company match, paid parental leave, disability coverage, basic life insurance, and paid time off. Employees may also be eligible for restricted stock units, annual bonuses, and incentive pay depending on role.