Engineering Program Manager, Acacia; onsite

The application window is expected to close on: 01/08/2026

Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received
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Join the Acacia team, which takes pride in providing and fostering a collaborative environment to ensure success and personal growth. The Acacia Communications team designs intelligent transceivers using advanced signal processing and photonic integration for the 100G, 400G, 1T+ bit speeds, and beyond, fiber optic transmission markets deployed in hyperscale and webscale data centers. We also service Metro, long-haul, and ultra-long-haul telecommunication networks.

You will collaborate with our Sales and Support teams (SAE's), supporting our tier 1 customers as a liaison between the customer and our entire development and operations teams.

As a Technical Engineering Program Manager, you will be working very closely with the Acacia SAE, Sales, Engineering, and operations teams on a variety of product delivery tracks. You will thrive in a fast-paced and demanding environment while taking the time to build relationships and drive consensus. You are curious and seek to understand Optical Network Technology and markets, ranging from technical tradeoffs to business drivers and your team members perspectives and challenges.

You are courageous and call out issues you see, collaborating to find solutions. You are dedicated and drive issues to closure, rolling up your sleeves from day one. You are dedicated to continuous improvement, always striving to enhance and optimize outcomes.

You are typically the most organized person in the room and coupled with your communication skills, you excel at bringing people together in a shared understanding.

• Support, track and manage complex program execution, multi-functional coordination, and inter/intra team communications to deliver outstanding, high quality program outcomes.

• Clearly communicate, articulate, and in some cases negotiate customer requirements and expectations for traceable and executable results.

• Work closely with Acacia Engineering, Sales, Operations, and Product Management teams to define project scope, objectives, deliverables and timelines.

• Lead the product's release plans and set customer expectations on delivery of new products and/or new product features.

• Bring the right people together to identify risks and dependencies, define and adjust plans to mitigate and manage accordingly.

• Monitor program progress and effectively communicate status, updates to both internal and external teams.

• Coordinate and lead activities with customer, integration, verification and quality teams, to ensure products meet functional and performance specifications in Cisco and other 3rd party platforms.

• Drive day-to-day program activities to meet overall program objectives

• Resolve conflicts by focusing on shared purpose and mutual understanding

• Drive retrospectives and measurable process improvement efforts

• Bachelor's degree with 7+ years of related experience or Master's degree with 4+ years of related experience or PhD with 2+ years of related experience leading large scale enterprise engineering projects or programs

• 5+ years of program management experience within an engineering and/or product organization.

• Prior experience with optical networking products to include fundamental knowledge of optical networking products, features, and functions.

• Understanding of and expertise in Lean Enterprise / Agile / Kanban practices and supporting tools.

• Ability to understand, discuss / communicate technical concepts, with both technical and non-technical individuals.

• Able to communicate well with cross-functional team members, be able to efficiently collaborate with and influence team members to achieve project goals, and contribute positively to the engineering community environment.

• Comfortable interpreting data to translate and present as business insights

• Experience with collaboration tools, defect tracking tools, data visualization applications, and business applications.

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.