Escalations Technical Leader

Meet the Team

Join a dynamic, globally distributed group of technical program managers and escalation specialists who lead the charge on major security incidents and customer escalations. Our team is at the heart of Cisco s unified security platform, partnering closely with engineering, product, support, and account teams to ensure customers are protected and critical issues are resolved quickly. With a dozen talented professionals based in San Jose and around the world, the team thrives on collaboration, ownership, and a fast-paced, high-impact environment. Youll work alongside distinguished engineers and leaders, interact directly with customer executives, and help shape the future of our security products. If you re excited to solve complex problems, drive innovation, and make a tangible difference for customers and the business, this team is the place to be.

Your Impact

Drive the response to major incidents and complex customer escalations to ensure rapid restoration of critical services and customer satisfaction. Coordinate cross-functional teams, assign actions, track progress, and deliver timely updates to stakeholders, minimising risk and business disruption. Prepare operational reports, outage summaries, and follow-up actions to promote transparency and continual improvement. Partner with Problem Management to document root causes and implement corrective measures, preventing repeat incidents. Lead post-incident reviews, develop and refine playbooks, and leverage automation to enhance efficiency and organizational readiness. Success in this role means consistently resolving high-impact issues, improving incident management processes, and helping shape the reliability and resilience of Ciscos security platform.

• Lead P1/P2 incidents and complex customer escalations, coordinating cross-functional teams through resolution.
• Drive action tracking, ownership, stakeholder communication, and risk mitigation.
• Lead post-incident reviews, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions.
• Improve incident-management processes, playbooks, governance, and operational reporting.
• Conduct crisis simulations and tabletop exercises to strengthen readiness.
• Leverage automation and AI to enhance incident response and prevent recurring issues.
• Mentor incident managers and engineers.
• Partner with Architecture, Product, and Engineering to improve reliability, resilience, and observability.
• Drive continuous improvement and define strategic priorities for incident management.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree and 15 years of related experience, Master's degree and 8 years, or equivalent relevant experience.
• Experience in major incident management, technical support, customer escalation management, site reliability, or a related field.
• Experience leading P1/P2 incidents and complex customer issues through resolution or formal handoff.
• Experience coordinating Support, Engineering, Product, Account Teams, and leadership during critical incidents.
• Experience with incident tracking and customer-management tools such as Jira and Salesforce.
• Experience documenting root cause, corrective actions, and follow-up work.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Splunk Security products, including Splunk Enterprise Security, SOAR, XDR, EDR, or related cybersecurity technologies.
• Experience with cloud platforms, Kubernetes, APIs, networking, observability, or distributed systems.
• Ability to read or troubleshoot code in Python, Java, C++, Go, or a similar language.
• ITIL certification or experience applying ITIL incident, problem, change, and continual-improvement practices.
• Experience using automation, AIOps, or AI-enabled incident-management tools.
• Experience leading work across multiple regions and time zones.
• Ability to communicate clearly and make decisions during high-pressure situations.