The application window is expected to close on: 09/25/2026

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

This is a Hybrid role requiring work onsite Tuesday-Thursday.

Job Description

Meet the Team

Cisco’s Customer Experience (CX) organization is one of the company's fastest- growing and most innovative teams, crafting a first-in-class digital experience for our customers and partners everywhere they connect with Cisco. CX Platform is a platform-centric to support the diverse requirements of the CX organization and is being built with emerging technologies including predictive AI and generative AI to drive additional customer success. We are at the epicenter of developing with modern, cloud-native technologies that allow us to stay agile and adaptable in a constantly evolving market. Pioneers in our field, CX enables customers to maximize value with a simple, unified Cisco experience, driving accelerated time to impact. We deliver on time with high quality & urgency, and we drive decisions with data and transparency while leading with ownership & accountability.

Your Impact

We are seeking a motivated and detail-oriented Software Engineering Technical Lead to join our growing Agent Harness Engineering team. In this role, you will not only help build persistent, goal-oriented agent systems that "think" and "act" autonomously but also lead the strategic planning and execution of the agentic roadmap. You will bridge the gap between technical innovation and project delivery, ensuring that our autonomous systems are built on time, align with cross-functional milestones, and integrate seamlessly into the broader ecosystem.

Key responsibilities include designing, building, and deploying autonomous agents that operate within dynamic environments, making independent decisions to achieve goals. You will lead the end-to-end lifecycle of agentic projects, defining project scopes, breaking down complex technical requirements into actionable tasks, and managing the team’s backlog to ensure high-velocity delivery. Implementing multi-agent, collaborative systems and designing complex agent workflows using frameworks like LangGraph, AutoGen, or CrewAI will be part of your role. You will act as the primary technical point of contact to coordinate schedules and dependencies across multiple teams, ensuring that agentic capabilities are synchronized with organizational priorities. Developing and integrating tools, APIs, and databases for agents to interact with, enabling real-world actions, is essential. You will optimize large language model (LLM) interactions, including prompting, fine-tuning, and context management to enhance reasoning and reduce hallucinations. Providing regular status updates and risk assessments to leadership regarding project timelines and technical blockers is expected. Additionally, you will collaborate with engineering teams to integrate autonomous capabilities into existing software development life cycles (SDLC), championing Agile methodologies and best practices for task tracking and documentation.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelors + 8yrs of related experience OR Masters + 6 years of related experience.
• Experience in designing, developing, and deploying AI agents, agentic systems and/or agentic orchestration patterns.
• Experience with evals driven development and observability for non-deterministic systems.
• Experience developing code in Python.
• Experience with frameworks such as LangChain or LangGraph.
• Experience with cloud-based data platforms like SnowFlake.
• Experience with asynchronous programming (multi-turn agents or multi-step agents or similar).

• MCP or tool-integration patterns for enterprise systems.
• Experience using Jira and GitHub.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Demonstrated leadership skills with the ability to collaborate across teams.
• Ability to lead projects, organize and manage deliverables.
• Experience working through new features and prioritizing execution.
• Strong communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Proactive "Go Getters" comfortable in fast-paced environments.
• Experience building applications with frontier models and open-source LLM Ecosystems.
• Strong understanding of large language models (LLMs), including how they work and how to train and focus them on specific areas.
• Experience with natural language processing and prompt engineering.
• Experience with enterprise security and agentic access control patterns.
• Experience with using AI Development Tools like Claude Code, Codex, Snowflake Cortex or similar.

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. 

Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada:

The starting salary range posted for this position is $183,800.00 to $263,600.00 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 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:

$183,800.00 - $303,100.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$163,600.00 - $269,800.00

* 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.