Software Technical Leader

We’re about ten people, remote across North America. One daily sync, then we get back to the work. The surface area is wide for a team this size — backend services, endpoint installers, and the web console — and the same people who take a problem apart are the ones who ship it.

We work closely with Product and our support teams to understand customer problems and see whether our solutions are working. Ownership here means carrying a solution through to the customer, not handing it off. We’re leaning into agentic development, and you’ll work across those layers to take problems from investigation through delivery.

This role has no direct reports. You’ll set technical direction, raise the quality bar, and help other engineers grow through technical guidance, thoughtful reviews, and mentoring.

The Software Technical Leader is a senior individual-contributor role responsible for the technical direction and delivery of Orbital endpoint security software. This role leads complex software and release-delivery work across architecture, reliability, security, platform compatibility, and customer experience.

This role operates in a highly collaborative, distributed software environment. The individual works independently and with cross-functional partners to resolve complex technical challenges, align priorities, and deliver customer-facing software. The role may require responding to urgent customer, security, or release needs.

• Define technical direction for Orbital endpoint software, primarily developed in Go, including architecture, reliability, performance, observability, maintainability, and secure software practices.

• Lead complex technical initiatives from design through delivery across supported endpoint platforms, installation methods, packaging, upgrades, and customer environments.

• Establish and improve standards for software design, testing, release readiness, security, and operational supportability.

• Lead technical investigation and resolution of complex endpoint issues involving operating-system integration, services, permissions, networking, dependencies, compatibility, and performance.

• Drive release planning and readiness decisions, including risk assessment, validation expectations, staged rollout, rollback criteria, and stakeholder communication.

• Lead assessment of third-party and open-source dependencies, including upstream changes, vulnerabilities, compatibility concerns, and security-driven delivery needs.

• Partner with Development/Engineering, Product, QA, Security, Support, and customer-facing teams to balance quality, customer impact, security exposure, and delivery commitments.

• Mentor software developer and technical leads and influence technical decisions across teams without direct reporting authority.

• Opportunity to shape and deliver security software changes across cloud services and endpoint systems that can reach millions of customer endpoints.

• Leads future-facing work to improve endpoint-to-cloud communication reliability, evolve architecture safely, strengthen security and lifecycle practices, and deliver changes incrementally with monitoring.

• Bachelor's degree plus 12 years of related experience; Master's degree plus 8 years; PhD plus 5 years; or equivalent related work experience.

• Experience developing and delivering production software used by customers.

• Technical leadership experience in Go or comparable systems languages.

• Background developing endpoint agents or other operating-system-integrated software for Windows, macOS, or Linux.

• Experience resolving production issues involving software compatibility, installation, upgrades, packaging, reliability, performance, or security.

• Contributions to engineering standards or practices for software testing, security, reliability, or release delivery.

Cisco may use AI Tools to review candidate-provided details—such as skills, experience, location, and education—to determine how closely candidates match job criteria. AI Tools are intended to guide and support the recruitment team in identifying and prioritizing candidates but are not used in isolation or without human judgment. For more information about Cisco’s use of AI please see the Job Candidate Privacy Statement.

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.