Lead Software Engineer Visa Sponsorship Jobs in California

The application window is expected to close on: 09/08/2026. Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.

The successful applicant may be performing work on US Government classified environments, and therefore, must be a U.S. Person (i.e., U.S. citizen, U.S. national, lawful permanent resident, asylee, or refugee). This position may also perform work that the U.S. government has specified can only be performed by a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil.

Meet the team

The Dashboard Build team supports Cisco's FedRAMP Moderate environment, and we are building on that foundation for U.S. federal and defense customers with FedRAMP High and DoD Impact Level 5 (IL5) requirements. That means designing systems that are scalable, reliable, auditable, and simple to operate under a high bar for security and compliance.

We’re looking for a technical lead who thrives in high impact, high visibility projects, with an excitement to tackle complex problems and collaborate across teams.

Your Impact

• Lead architecture and technical direction to design, implement, and operate build and deploy systems, to meet FedRAMP High and IL5 requirements, with a focus on scalability, availability, product quality, and developer experience
• Translate security and compliance requirements into implementation: access control, audit logging, secret management, vulnerability response, and evidence collection.
• Work closely with product engineering teams to monitor and maintain build health and accuracy
• Collaborate with the SRE team to ensure scalability and availability of build systems
• Prevent, predict, and respond to issues, coordinating the triage and remediation efforts across the product teams
• Lead by example through production code, design reviews, code reviews, mentoring, debugging, and operational improvements

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree combined with 8 years of experience in development, build, and release engineering or computer science, or Master's Degree, combined with 6 years of related experience, or PhD, combined with 3 years of similar experience
• Experience with the development and configuration of modular build/deploy systems and source control tools for CI/CD (such as Jenkins, GitLab, TeamCity, GitHub, Buildkite, CircleCI, and/or RWX) with knowledge of scripting languages (such as Shell, Groovy, Ruby, or Python)
• Experience with the use of containers in a build environment, and tools such as AWS, Artifactory, Docker, and/or Kubernetes
• Experience with JavaScript/TypeScript and React toolchains and pipelines
• Experience with Ruby on Rails and RSpec pipelines

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with FedRAMP Moderate/High, DoD IL4/IL5, FISMA, GovRAMP (formerly StateRAMP), or similar regulated environments
• Experience with database maintenance and migrations in production environments
• Experience with data collection, parsing, and visualization tools such as the Elastic Stack and Grafana
• Experience with automated testing frameworks (such as Rspec, Jest, Cypress, or similar frameworks)
• Experience leading technical projects or providing technical direction across a team

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 $186,900.00 to $267,700.00 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:

$186,900.00 - $307,800.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$166,300.00 - $274,100.00

• 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.