Software Engineering Technical Leader -- Secure Workload Agent

The application window is expected to close on: 08/11/2026 Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received .

Isovalent, now part of Cisco, was founded by the creators of Cilium and eBPF and is building the next generation of cloud-native networking and security technologies. Within Cisco Security, the Secure Workload engineering team develops the Unified Agent that provides runtime visibility, workload protection, and policy enforcement across physical servers, virtual machines, cloud infrastructure, and containerized environments.

As the platform footprint continues to expand, the team is investing in support for additional operating systems and processor architectures, including IBM AIX on Power, IBM System z, Solaris/SPARC, and other specialized enterprise platforms. This work enables Cisco to support some of the world's largest financial institutions, government organizations, and enterprise customers running mission-critical infrastructure.

This is a highly technical engineering team where software engineers work close to the operating system, compilers, and kernel. Team members own complex platform enablement efforts, collaborate closely with engineers across the Secure Workload and Isovalent organizations, and contribute to technologies that power runtime security for modern infrastructure.

As a Software Engineering Technical Leader, you will design, develop, and optimize the Secure Workload Unified Agent across multiple operating systems and hardware architectures. You will work on low-level systems software, kernel interactions, and platform enablement to ensure the agent delivers high performance, reliability, and security across a broad range of enterprise environments.

Success in this role comes from independently delivering complex engineering projects, maintaining high software quality, and helping extend the Unified Agent to new enterprise platforms while mentoring other engineers on the team. In this role, you will:

- Design, develop, and optimize low-level software components for the Secure Workload Unified Agent using C, with a focus on operating system and kernel-level functionality.

- Develop and maintain support for enterprise operating systems and architectures including Linux, IBM AIX, IBM Power, IBM System z, Solaris, and other supported platforms.

- Diagnose complex software issues using crash dump and core dump analysis, debugging tools, and operating system internals to improve product reliability and performance.

- Collaborate with engineers across Secure Workload, Tetragon, and Isovalent to deliver runtime security capabilities and platform enhancements for enterprise customers.

- Mentor junior engineers through technical guidance, design discussions, and code reviews while driving engineering excellence across the team.

- Bachelor's degree with 12+ years of related experience, or Master's degree with 8+ years of related experience, or PhD with 5+ years of related experience.

- Experience developing software in C for Linux or UNIX-based operating systems.

- Experience with operating system internals, kernel programming, or kernel driver development.

- Experience with compilers, cross-platform compilation, and debugging techniques including crash dump or core dump analysis.

- Experience developing software for enterprise operating systems or multiple processor architectures.

- Experience developing software for IBM Power (PowerPC) and/or IBM System z (s390x) architectures.

- Experience developing software for Solaris or other UNIX operating systems.

- Experience developing host-based security, endpoint, networking, or systems software that interacts with operating system kernels.

- Experience mentoring software engineers and leading technical design or implementation efforts across complex engineering projects.

The starting salary range posted for this position is $214,100.00 to $309,800.00 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.