# Principal Software Engineer, AI Defense (Hybrid) at Cisco

- Company: Cisco
- What the company does: Cisco is a worldwide technology leader powering an inclusive future for all. Learn more about our products, services, solutions, and innovations. Backed by Sequoia and Menlo.
- Company website: https://www.cisco.com/
- Type: Startups (AI role)
- Level: Principal and up
- Location: Milpitas, California, US
- Work setup: On-site
- Posted: 2026-10-30
- Apply by: 2026-12-14
- Apply: https://cisco.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Cisco_Careers/job/Milpitas-California-US/Principal-Software-Engineer--AI-Defense--Hybrid-_2027946?utm_source=1752vc&utm_medium=careers
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/cisco-principal-software-engineer-ai-defense-hybrid/

## About the role

As a Principal Software Engineer for AI Defense, you will serve as the chief technical authority driving the end-to-end security architecture for Cisco's enterprise AI ecosystems. You will architect high-throughput control and data planes that safeguard foundation models, multi-agent frameworks, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool execution from emerging cyber threats. Found on 1752vc Careers, the job board for startup and VC roles.

## What they're looking for

- Bachelor’s degree in computer science and 15+ years of relevant software engineering experience, Master’s degree and 12+ years, or Ph.D. and 8+ years building enterprise-scale distributed systems
- 8+ years of hands-on software development experience utilizing Go, Python, or Java to build production microservices, SDKs, and REST/gRPC APIs
- E xperience architecting and operating multi-tenant cloud-native infrastructure on AWS or GCP, including container orchestration with Kubernetes (EKS/GKE) and event-driven data streaming (Kafka/MSK)
- 5+ years of core engineering experience in cybersecurity domains (e.g., cloud security posture management, identity/access governance, RBAC/ABAC, threat modeling, or security analytics)
- E xperience building, debugging, or securing LLM applications, agentic frameworks, or Model Context Protocol (MCP) architectures in production


Source: 1752vc Careers, https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/cisco-principal-software-engineer-ai-defense-hybrid/