Senior Software Engineer, AI Cluster Networking Performance Engineer

Cisco

Confirmed live yesterday High trust

Hybrid

Quick summary

Work type: Hybrid
Location: Milpitas, CASan Jose, CA
Salary: $167,700–$245,200 / yr
Employment: Full-time
Posted: 4 days ago
Freshness: Confirmed live yesterday
Closes: Nov 30, 2026
Nearby: 99+ roles within 25 mi

Market check

Salary context

Competitive pay

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $201k

This role $206k

$155k $258k

below market most similar roles pay here above market

This role pays less than 51% of similar roles. Most pay $165,750–$235,750 — the blue band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $206k versus about $201k for comparable roles.

Based on 240 similar postings.

Employer

About Cisco

Cisco Systems is the world''s leading networking technology company, designing and manufacturing networking hardware, telecommunications equipment, and cybersecurity solutions for businesses and governments. Industry: Networking Technology & Cybersecurity

Cisco currently has 261 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $167,700–$245,000 across 197 roles with salary data.

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At a glance

TL;DR · Senior Software Engineer, AI Cluster Networking Performance Engineer

Role Posting Log in to save

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will join the Cisco Validated Infrastructure Services team to establish and prove the performance of large AI clusters. You will be responsible for debugging, profiling, and optimizing the full AI cluster networking and GPU performance stack, including boot-time behavior, PCIe links, and Linux kernel interactions. Your daily work involves investigating kernel-level failures, diagnosing RDMA/RoCEv2, NCCL, and SmartNIC/DPU congestion, and correlating unified hardware traces across host CPUs and GPU compute streams. You will utilize C/C++, Python, Wireshark, and NVIDIA diagnostic tools to eliminate end-to-end bottlenecks. This role addresses the technical challenge of validating high-speed Ethernet or InfiniBand environments, ensuring that complex multi-plane network fabrics meet rigorous performance baselines before being delivered to customers.

Skills

Linux Kernel RDMA RoCEv2 NCCL C C++ Python PCIe SmartNIC DPU DOCA SDK Wireshark InfiniBand Ethernet distributed-systems Kernel Tracing Performance Profiling

What you'll do

Debug, profile, and optimize the full AI cluster networking and GPU performance stack.
Investigate kernel-level failures, boot-time anomalies, PCIe link issues, and driver behavior.
Diagnose and tune RDMA/RoCEv2, NCCL, SmartNIC/DPU, and network congestion.
Correlate unified hardware traces across host CPUs, PCIe switches, SmartNICs, and GPU compute streams.
Capture and analyze Wireshark packets, system logs, NVIDIA support logs, and observability data.
Partner with hardware and software teams to eliminate end-to-end performance bottlenecks.

What we're looking for

Bachelor's degree plus 7 years of experience, Master's plus 4 years, or PhD plus 1 year of related experience.
4+ years of experience in Linux kernel, networking, GPU, and distributed-systems debugging.
Experience writing code in C, C++, and Python.
Experience with user-mode and kernel-mode drivers.
Experience with Linux network stack, RDMA/RoCEv2, NCCL, PCIe, and performance profiling.
Experience reasoning from packet captures, traces, counters, logs, and reproducible benchmarks.
SmartNIC/DPU optimization and DOCA SDK experience (preferred).
Experience with Cisco switching, AI cluster network fabrics, and high-speed Ethernet or InfiniBand environments (preferred).

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