At a Glance
- Tasks: Lead the design of AI-powered platforms and enhance global SaaS infrastructure.
- Company: Join Cisco, a leader in innovative collaboration technology.
- Benefits: Competitive salary, flexible work options, and endless growth opportunities.
- Other info: Collaborative culture focused on innovation and mentorship.
- Why this job: Make a real impact in AI and cloud infrastructure while leading a passionate team.
- Qualifications: 8+ years in software engineering with strong skills in Python, Go, or Java.
The predicted salary is between 63000 - 77000 £ per year.
Meet the Team
The Collaboration Technology Group is redefining the future of teamwork, building services that connect people effortlessly across devices, locations and time zones.
Our team builds, runs and continuously improves the platform services behind Cisco’s collaboration products, operating at global scale across numerous datacentres.
We’re a passionate, collaborative team focused on reliability, innovation and engineering excellence.
Your impact
As a Technical Leader, you will drive the architectural vision and implementation of our next-generation AI-powered Production Intelligence platform.
You will combine Site Reliability Engineering practices with modern agentic AI (reusable Skills, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and LLM tooling) to transform how engineering and leadership teams monitor, diagnose, and auto-remediate global Saa S infrastructure.
What you'll do
- Technical Leadership & Architecture: Define the technical roadmap and architecture for AI-assisted observability, automated incident response, and self-healing cloud infrastructure.
- Agentic Workflows & Tooling: Design and build production-grade AI agents, MCP tool integrations, and deterministic evaluation pipelines for automated operational decision support.
- Telemetry & Insights: Architect ingestion and correlation pipelines across distributed logs, metrics, Open Telemetry traces, change events, and runbooks to accelerate Mean Time to Detection (MTTD) and Resolution (MTTR).
- Safe Production Automation: Develop proactive anomaly detection and Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) remediation workflows with rigorous safety, security, and quality guardrails.
- Reliability & Scalability
Engineering: Partner with application and infrastructure teams to define SLIs/SLOs, handle error budgets, and lead deep‑dive post‑incident reviews (PIRs).
- Mentorship & Collaboration: Mentor senior and mid-level engineers, establish engineering best practices, and drive alignment across global development and operations teams.
- You’ll manage priorities and deadlines, communicate progress clearly and work across teams to turn production needs into reliable software and AI-assisted capabilities.
- Minimum qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree + 8 years of related experience, Master’s + 6 years, or Ph D + 3 years in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field.
- Proven record as a Technical Lead or Lead SRE/Software Engineer delivering distributed, high-availability Saa S platforms at scale.
- Strong proficiency in Python, Go, Java, or C++ with experience designing microservices, APIs, and production automation.
- Deep experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and container orchestration in large-scale multi-cluster environments.
- Proven background in SRE practices: SLI/SLO design, observability platforms (metrics/logs/traces), incident management, and automated RCA.
- Preferred Qualifications
- AI & Agentic Systems: Hands‑on experience building LLM pipelines, AI Agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers/clients, RAG architectures, and evaluation frameworks.
- Observability & Telemetry: Experience with Open Telemetry (OTel), Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, Thousand Eyes, or distributed tracing systems.
- Cloud & Infrastructure: Expertise in public cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure), Terraform/Ia C, and Git Ops/CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, Git Hub Actions).
- Safe Automation & Guardrails: Experience implementing responsible AI guardrails, deterministic fallback logic, and policy-driven remediation engines.
- Data & Messaging: Experience with streaming and data platforms (Kafka, Redis, Postgre SQL, Elasticsearch/Vector DBs).
- Collab Hiring
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.
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Software Engineering Tech Lead (SRE + AI) employer: Cisco Systems, Inc.
Cisco is an exceptional employer that fosters a culture of innovation and collaboration, empowering employees to lead transformative projects in the AI era. With a commitment to professional growth, employees benefit from extensive training opportunities and mentorship within a diverse, multidisciplinary team. Located in the UK, Cisco offers a dynamic work environment where your contributions directly impact global infrastructure, making it a rewarding place to build a meaningful career.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Software Engineering Tech Lead (SRE + AI)
✨Join Local Tech Meetups
Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at Cisco Systems, Inc. or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!
✨Contribute to Open Source Projects
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✨Tap into Online Developer Communities
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We think you need these skills to ace Software Engineering Tech Lead (SRE + AI)
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.
Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at Cisco Systems, Inc..
Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at Cisco Systems, Inc. and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!
Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!
How to prepare for a job interview at Cisco Systems, Inc.
✨Brush Up on Your Coding Skills
For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.
✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks
Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If Cisco Systems, Inc. uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.
✨Prepare for Behavioural Questions
While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.
