Principal Software Engineer | CASB, AVC

Job Summary

Principal Engineer - Data Security Cloud Protection

Your Impact

As a Principal Engineer, you will shape the technical direction of Cisco Secure Access at the intersection of AI, application intelligence, SaaS security, and cloud-scale architecture. You will define the architecture and roadmap for core CASB and Application Visibility and Control (AVC) capabilities that help enterprises gain deeper visibility, enforce granular application policies, and protect data across today's SaaS and AI-driven environments. You will lead the transformation of application discovery and classification through AI-assisted intelligence, improving automation, accuracy, data freshness, and the speed at which new applications and threats can be identified. You will also help embed responsible AI across the product development lifecycle, using AI to accelerate engineering productivity, quality, testing, troubleshooting, and delivery.

What You Will Do

The Principal Engineer will lead the architecture and technical direction for Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) and Application Visibility and Control (AVC) capabilities within Cisco Secure Access.

• Define the architecture and roadmap for application discovery, granular application controls, SaaS tenant controls, and offline or API-based DLP and malware scanning of SaaS content.
• Lead the broader use of AI in the product, including AI-powered security capabilities, controls for generative AI applications, and responsible use of AI across the product development lifecycle.
• Own the technical strategy for the internal CASI application-intelligence platform, including data quality, confidence scoring, human validation, model monitoring, update speed, and scaling with traffic and application growth. Lead the AI-assisted transformation of application discovery and classification.
• Guide critical feature designs and establish foundations for security, privacy, performance, scalability, resilience, observability, quality, troubleshooting, and cost efficiency.
• Translate customer needs, emerging threats, and product priorities into scalable capabilities in partnership with product management, security research, architects, and engineering teams.
• Provide cross-team technical leadership and mentorship, resolve complex architectural issues, and raise engineering standards without becoming a design-review bottleneck.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Typically, 12+ years of software engineering experience, including architecture and technical leadership across multiple teams.
• Demonstrated experience designing and operating large-scale, cloud-native distributed systems.
• Experience architecting or integrating AI or machine-learning capabilities into production products or engineering workflows.
• Strong background in cloud-delivered web, SaaS, network, or data security, with understanding of policy enforcement and data protection.
• Proven ability to remain hands-on while influencing senior stakeholders, guiding complex designs, and mentoring experienced engineers.

Preferred Qualifications

• Masters degree or PhD in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Machine Learning, or a related field.
• Direct experience with CASB, AVC, SSE/SASE, Secure Web Gateway, DLP, malware protection, or SaaS tenant security.
• Experience building application-discovery, traffic-classification, application-intelligence, or high-volume telemetry systems.
• Experience with AI-based classification, human-in-the-loop workflows, model evaluation, monitoring, and MLOps.
• Experience architecting global, multi-tenant services on AWS and resolving complex production or customer issues.

Disclaimer: This job posting has been aggregated from external source. Role details, content, and availability are subject to change. Applicants are advised to confirm the latest information directly on the company website before applying.