STEM OPT Software Quality Engineer Jobs

The application window is expected to close on: 10/01/2026

This position is open to candidates in Fulton, MD or Austin, TX.

Meet the Team

Cisco’s Network Security System and Integration Test (SIT) and System Test (ST) teams ensure the quality, reliability, and scalability of our Secure Firewall solutions, serving as a vital line of defense for our enterprise customers.

Your Impact

As a Software Quality Engineer, you will independently own assigned test areas and validate complex, end-to-end customer workflows across physical, virtual, and cloud environments. You will combine hands-on system testing, automation, network-security expertise, and disciplined defect investigation to identify integration and regression risks before release.

You will work closely with software development, platform, automation, product, and release teams throughout the development lifecycle. This role requires strong technical judgment, execution ownership, and clear communication of product-quality risks. In this role, you will:

• Develop and execute risk-based test plans for Cisco Secure Firewall products and their management, data-plane, platform, and ecosystem integrations.
• Validate end-to-end workflows across firewall management, threat inspection, routing, switching, NAT, VPN, identity, logging, policy deployment, and related security capabilities.
• Test complex deployment topologies, including standalone, high-availability, clustered, multi-instance, virtualized, and cloud-based environments.
• Perform feature integration, system, regression, upgrade, rollback, backward-compatibility, resiliency, recovery, scale, stress, and longevity testing.
• Design, implement, maintain, and troubleshoot automated tests using Python-based frameworks and supporting tools.
• Build, configure, and maintain representative test environments containing network devices, security appliances, traffic generators, virtual machines, and cloud resources.
• Reproduce, isolate, and characterize complex software and system failures using packet captures, logs, traces, core files, system metrics, and diagnostic tools.
• Document defects with clear reproduction procedures, technical evidence, business impact, and severity justification.
• Participate in feature handoffs, technical reviews, test-plan reviews, defect triage, and cross-functional quality reviews.
• Use AI-assisted engineering and testing tools where appropriate to accelerate test design, failure analysis, and automation development while validating outputs and protecting confidential information.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree + 5 years of experience in software quality engineering, system testing, network engineering, or a related discipline.
• Experience designing test scenarios, selecting appropriate methodologies, and configuring the required test environments.
• Experience using Python or a comparable scripting language for test automation and tooling.
• Experience with Linux or Unix administration and troubleshooting skills.
• Experience leveraging generative AI assistants across the software development lifecycle to accelerate coding, automate testing, and streamline work item management.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience testing network-security products such as firewalls, intrusion prevention or detection systems, secure gateways, or comparable security platforms.
• Strong knowledge of TCP/IP and network troubleshooting.

• Practical experience with:

• Layer 2 and Layer 3 networking

• LANs, link aggregation, and interface configurations
• Static and dynamic routing, including OSPF and BGP
• IPv4 and IPv6
• NAT and access-control policies
• Site-to-site and remote-access VPN technologies

• High availability, failover, clustering, or redundant systems

• Experience using packet-analysis and diagnostic tools such as Wireshark, tcpdump, system logs, debuggers, or equivalent utilities.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills and the ability to collaborate effectively across geographically distributed teams.
• Ability to investigate complex failures across multiple interacting components and communicate findings clearly.
• Experience with Cisco Secure Firewall, including FTD, FMC, ASA, FXOS, Snort, or related technologies.
• Experience with Python test frameworks such as pyATS, pytest, or comparable automation platforms.
• Familiarity with REST APIs, Git-based development workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and automated test execution systems.
• Experience validating upgrades, rollback, backward compatibility, configuration migration, and long-running production-like workloads.
• Experience with performance, scale, stress, soak, resiliency, or fault-injection testing.
• Familiarity with virtualization and cloud platforms such as VMware, KVM, AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Experience with traffic-generation, protocol-simulation, or network-performance tools.
• Knowledge of security threats, traffic inspection, identity integration, telemetry, logging, and observability.
• Cisco networking or security certification, such as CCNP Enterprise or CCNP Security.

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 $138,100.00 to $198,200.00 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 of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to 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:

$155,000.00 - $256,000.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$138,100.00 - $227,900.00

• 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.