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Senior Software Engineer - BGP Routing

Cisco Systems, Inc.
$165,000.00 to $241,400.00
life insurance, vision insurance, parental leave, paid holidays, sick time, 401(k)
United States, California, Milpitas
Nov 18, 2025

Meet the Team

Renowned for being the best in the industry, our BGP Routing Team is part of the Distributed Systems Engineering group, where they focus on the design, development, coding, and testing of routing software modules. These modules are critical for providing enterprise, data center, and service provider solutions, giving them a competitive edge. This team oversees the XR BGP protocols and works on platform-independent networking software compatible with all XR platforms, including Cisco 8000, ASR 9000, and 5500. They develop new features for service providers and hyperscaler customers, addressing emerging demands with a rich implementation of technologies like segment routing and EVPN, L3VPN, while ensuring IETC (RFC) compliance. Primarily coding in C with Python for automation, the team focuses on multithreaded development to enhance network scalability and performance. This is a growing team with a presence across San Jose, India, Ottawa, and Europe.

Your Impact

The Tech Lead position involves working on the development of new features, bug fixing, and addressing customer queries within the BGP protocol space. The position requires developing expertise for webscaler demands while collaborating with other software teams to ensure high-quality software delivery.

  • Develop new features and fix bugs, including customer-specific and engineering-driven initiatives.
  • Focus on BGP protocol specifics to meet growing demands from customers.
  • Conduct peer code/design reviews and collaborate with adjacent software teams on programming interfaces.
  • Develop automated tests to ensure a high-quality handoff to the Test team and deliver detailed software specifications.
  • Handle customer queries and participate in triages for issue resolution.

Minimum Qualifications

  • Bachelors in STEM with 7+ years of experience or Masters in STEM with 4+ years of experience or PhD in STEM with 1+ years of experience.
  • Previous software development experience in the networking domain
  • Multithreaded programming experience with C
  • Knowledge of Routing Technologies

Preferred Qualifications

  • Knowledge of BGP, OSPF, ISIS, MPLS protocols
  • AI/ML knowledge is a plus for productivity of daily workflows
  • Understands advanced architecture principles and design practices
  • Creative problem-solving skills and excellent troubleshooting/debugging skills
  • Experience in manageability frameworks such as YANG/SNMP/XML.
  • Understanding datacenter technologies/concepts like VxLAN, Segment-Routing, Traffic-Engineering
  • Familiarity with Unix/Linux. Experience using RTOS (ex: QNX, VxWorks)
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 $165,000.00 to $241,400.00 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 ofunused sick timecarried forwardfrom one calendar yearto 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:

$165,000.00 - $277,600.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$146,700.00 - $247,000.00

* 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.

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