Validation Engineer Jobs in San Jose, CA

The application window is expected to close on: 08/28/2026. Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.

Meet the Team

The Hyperscaler Routing team within Cisco Networking focuses on delivering advanced routing solutions tailored for hyperscale environments. The team leverages Cisco Silicon One technology, which converges routing and switching silicon to provide high capacity, power efficiency, and programmability. This enables hyperscalers to architect distributed AI environments with seamless scalability and security. Their work supports cutting-edge AI infrastructure and cloud-scale networking, addressing the demands of AI traffic and next-generation hyperscale routing systems.

Your Impact

As a key contributor to Cisco’s AI/ML infrastructure initiatives, you will plan, execute, and analyze comprehensive benchmarks on Cisco switches, focusing on throughput, latency, congestion, incast, failover, path diversity, and workload performance to ensure optimal AI/ML network operations.

You will be guiding AI/ML workload deployments from initial scoping and test planning through execution and benchmark analysis, ensuring success criteria are met. Your role includes developing AI-driven automation workflows to streamline network development, operations, and implementations.

You will define rigorous benchmark methodologies, test plans, KPIs, pass/fail criteria, and reporting structures for AI RoCE Ethernet fabrics, benchmarking fabric performance across critical metrics including latency, throughput, path diversity, ECMP and link utilization, congestion behavior, packet drops, retransmissions, queue occupancy, and recovery behavior. You will run and analyze performance tests using industry-standard tools such as NCCL, RCCL, ib_write_bw, ib_read_bw, ib_send_bw, ib_write_lat, netperf, iperf, MPI, OSU benchmarks, and microburst test methods.

You will validate switch ASIC features including buffers, schedulers, QoS/queuing, ECMP behavior, telemetry, hashing, traffic distribution, and congestion visibility.

Owning switch OS configuration and automation, you will utilize SONiC, NX-OS, Ansible, Python, Bash, Git, and related tooling to implement and validate advanced features such as SRv6, segment routing, uSID, Adj-SID, and policy-based pathing as required. You will document PoC architecture, benchmark methodologies, topology diagrams, configurations, results, findings, and recommendations.

This role empowers you to shape the future of AI infrastructure networking by delivering scalable, high-performance, and resilient network fabrics that meet the stringent demands of AI/ML workloads, driving innovation and customer success at Cisco.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelors + 7 years of related experience, or Masters + 4 years of related experience.
• Python for automation experience.
• Experience with L2/L3 network protocols such as BGP, OSPF, EVPN, VxLAN, IPv6 or similar.
• Experience with Traffic tools such as Spirent, IXIA or similar.
• Docker or Kubernetes experience.
• Experience with network testing and validation.

Preferred Qualifications

• Clear written and verbal communication skills as well as documentation skills.
• SONiC, NxOS, Linux or other open source network operating systems experience.
• Deep understanding of Leaf-spine fabric and troubleshooting them.
• Experience with Cisco Nexus Dashboard and related automation tools for provisioning, managing and troubleshooting the fabric.
• Experience handling complex network segmentation, security policies, and multi-site fabric designs.
• Experience with RDMA, RoCEv2, PFC, ECN, congestion control, QoS, buffer behavior, and lossless Ethernet concepts.

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 $199,700.00 to $254,600.00 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:

$199,700.00 - $292,800.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$174,500.00 - $260,500.00

• 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.