Technical Lead - Forwarding Plane

Meet the Team

The Cisco Distributed System Engineering (DSE) group is at the forefront of developing products that power the largest networks in the world. The networking industry is going through a massive transformation to build the next generation infrastructure to meet the needs of AI/ML workloads and continuously increasing internet users and applications. We are uniquely positioned to capture that market transition. This team builds products by harnessing the potential of open-source technologies while pushing the boundaries on Systems and Silicon Architecture.

You will be working among engineers who are passionate about tackling complex technology, building large-scale distributed systems and comfortable working with open-source communities and technologies. You will be part of a fast-paced work environment and responsible for end-to-end product development and production support.

Your Impact

As a Data Plane Engineer, you play a crucial role in advancing the Cisco 8000 Platform with the SONiC network operating system. Your problem-solving abilities and adaptability in a dynamic environment enable you to excel in designing and developing innovative data plane and control plane software.

• Impactful role in enhancing the Cisco 8000 Platform using SONiC.
• Thrive in dynamic environments through continuous learning and growth.
• Quickly assimilate information and resolve complex issues as a self-starter.
• Adaptable and effective in multi-disciplinary, multicultural, and geographically dispersed teams.
• Passionate technologist with leadership skills in software development.
• Expertise in 'forwarding' and 'services' data plane feature sets.
• Strong focus on automation, scripting languages, and test frameworks.
• Key responsibilities include designing and developing:
• Layer 3 features [V4, V6]
• ACL configurations [L2, L3, Ingress, Egress, ACL-based forwarding]
• Packet Mirroring
• Bidirectional Forwarding Detection
• Contribute significantly to platform capability and performance.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in STEM or technical equivalent
• 8+years software development experience
• 5+ years' experience with embedded software development using C, C++ and/or Python
• 3+ years Data Plane experience working with networking processing unit (NPU), data processing unit (DPU) or software data plane
• 3+ years' experience in data-plane forwarding technologies such as L2, L3, VXLAN, ACL, Tunneling protocols

Preferred Qualifications

• Network Operating Systems in the Linux user space
• GIT, Jira, Jenkins, and CI/CD pipeline tools
• Virtualization and container technologies including KVM/Qemu, Docker and/or Kubernetes
• Experience in data-plane services including ACL and queuing techniques like WRED, Policers, PFC, ECN
• Team Lead experience

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