Senior Software Engineer, Control Plane (Go) - Hypershield

The application window is expected to close on: 09/15/2026 Note: This is a remote U.S. based role, requiring work within the Pacific Time Zone.   Meet the Team   Join Cisco’s Cisco Hypershield team, where we are building the next generation of distributed security infrastructure for modern networking environments. Within Hypershield , the Smart Switch team develops foundational security capabilities that extend across multiple Cisco platforms, including switching, routing, and firewall systems.   This team is responsible for core control plane software that enables policy configuration, deployment workflows, logging, visibility, and feature orchestration across a shared security architecture used by products spanning Cisco systems networking portfolios, including Nexus, Catalyst, and emerging smart switch platforms.   The work here is highly foundational: features built by this team influence security behavior across multiple Cisco networking products and future infrastructure platforms.

In this role, you will design and develop control plane software for security features used in smart switching platforms and distributed firewall systems. You will contribute to core feature development from design through implementation, with a focus on APIs, policy orchestration, and secure service integration.   You will work closely with engineers across control plane , data plane , and platform teams to deliver scalable capabilities that support deployment, observability, and policy enforcement across distributed environments.   What you’ll do   Design and develop control plane features for network security products using Go in Linux-based environments   Build and maintain APIs and cloud-based configuration services that translate network and security policy into configurations consumed by distributed networking infrastructure.   Develop business logic for network configuration and orchestration, working with networking concepts such as VLANs, VRFs, VXLAN, network topology, and TCP/IP-based communication.   Build software that manages and distributes configuration across networking devices and systems, with an understanding of how control-plane decisions interact with the underlying data plane.   Work with network configuration models and interfaces, including YANG or similar standards used to configure and manage network infrastructure.   Integrate third-party components and internal services into Cisco security platforms   Collaborate with data plane and platform engineering teams to deliver end-to-end feature functionality   Contribute to architecture discussions, feature design, and technical execution for new security capabilities   Ability to collaborate effectively with peers across a geographically distributed team, with regular overlap during Pacific Time (PST/ PDT) business hours.

Bachelor's degree + 8 years of related software engineering experience, or Master's + 6 years of related experience, or PhD + 3 years of related experience.   5+ years of development experience in languages such as Go , or C++     Experience developing software in Linux environments     Experience developing software for networking or network infrastructure products, with knowledge of networking concepts such as TCP/IP, VLANs, VRFs, VXLAN, network topology, routing/switching, or control plane/data plane interactions.   Preferred Qualification s   5+ y ears of professional Go development experience     Experience designing and developing APIs using REST, gRPC , or Protocol Buffers   Experience working with Kubernetes-based applications, including developing, deploying, debugging, or operating software running in Kubernetes environments   Familiarity with Kubernetes concepts such as CRDs, Kubernetes APIs, controllers, RBAC, or secrets management   Experience developing software for switching, routing, firewall , or other network infrastructure