Principal Engineer; Golang, Distributed Systems - Isovalent Secure team

Application window is expected to close on: 07/15/2026. Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received. This position is Hybrid, requiring attendance at our Milpitas office approximately one day per week, or as needed.

Iovalent, now part of Cisco, is the company founded by the creators of Cilium and eBPF. Cisco Secure Workload is a flagship security product offering workload protection, micro‑segmentation, and is part of the Hybrid Mesh Firewall solution. Cisco Isovalent and Cisco Secure Workload are together building the next generation of products for securing workloads and AI infrastructure.

• Provide technical leadership to a team of highly motivated engineers working on backend services.
• Act as a subject‑matter expert, advising on technical vision, roadmaps, leadership, and make architectural contributions.
• Collect and process telemetry at scale from data sources in customer environments.
• React to changes in the environment and render policies in a highly scalable manner to a large number of enforcement points.
• Implement API endpoints that respond with minimal latencies even when crunching large volumes of data.
• Deploy solutions in highly complex distributed system environments and handle unique failure modes.

• At least 10+ years experience building software systems in one or more programming languages such as Go, C++, or Java.
• At least 5+ years in a technical leadership role in a software engineering environment.
• Masters + 10 years related experience, or Bachelors + 12 years of related experience, or PhD + 5 years related experience or equivalent work experience; degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.

• Proficiency in Computer Science foundational areas, including algorithms, systems, databases, performance engineering and security architecture.
• Schema/Data modeling design experience.
• Experience with large‑scale event processing architectures.
• Experience in systems programming and performance engineering.
• Experience working with security architecture and database design.
• Kubernetes experience.
• Experience programming using cloud APIs for AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Background in agile methodologies and rapid prototyping.

Competitive salary range: $ to $ (U.S./Canada). Benefits include medical, dental and vision insurance; a 401(k) plan with Cisco matching contribution; paid parental leave; short‑ and long‑term disability coverage; basic life insurance; equity grants; paid holidays (10 paid holidays per year plus a floating holiday); paid birthday day off; paid year‑end shutdown; paid days off for personal wellness; vacation time (16 paid days for non‑exempt employees, flexible for exempt);

sick time; and optional volunteer days. Detailed benefits are available on the Cisco careers site.