Forward Deployed Engineer Secure Services Edge (Remote)

This is a fully remote position and can be based anywhere in the United States.

Travel of up to 50% within the U.S. and internationally is required.

Cisco Security Business Group (SBG) is looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer in a customer-facing role that focuses on technical leadership, two-way advocacy, and expertise across our Security Service Edge (SSE) portfolio.

This role combines deep networking and security expertise with the opportunity to influence product direction, solve critically important customer challenges, and serve as the technical link between engineering and our most strategic enterprise customers! Cisco SSE offers a comprehensive end-to-end zero trust access security portfolio including VPN, zero trust access, web inspection in the cloud, firewall as a service, CASB, DLP and more. Cisco SSE deployment flexibility allows customers to select solutions tailored to their needs and transition seamlessly as requirements evolve.

You work globally across regions and time zones in support of our largest and most strategic SSE customers, coordinating with globally distributed engineering teams. Expect participation in a follow-the-sun escalation model and significant travel to customer sites and engineering hubs.

Serve as the technical liaison between Cisco SSE product management and engineering and our largest, most strategic enterprise SSE customers! Represent the product organization to customers by clearly recommending deployment best practices, issue findings, root causes, workarounds, product constraints, and delivery timelines. Represent the customer within the product organization by bringing production context, business impact, operational constraints, and technical requirements into build and prioritization discussions. Own sophisticated escalations, balancing realistic customer expectations with accurate, reproducible technical evidence while advocating for outcomes that protect customer environments. Translate requirements, RCAs, and technical decisions between customer and engineering contexts without losing fidelity on either side.

•  Lead the technical relationship on a named set of large and/or strategic SSE accounts, including critical issues end to end.

•  Drive proactive account health by improving deployment and rollout planning, configuration and policy consistency.

•  Build clean escalations for engineering - timeline, impact, repro, logs, pcaps, redacted configs - and translate outcomes back to the customer.

•  Feed recurring customer patterns back into product and engineering roadmaps as concrete requirements.

•  Build and support the CX-driven runbooks and documentation from lessons learned and for future SSE deployments.

•  Use AI-assisted log analysis with strong judgment; don't ship unverified conclusions to either side.

•  Script (Bash/Python) for diagnostics, health checks, automations, and lab reproduction.

•  Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical field with 10+ years of professional experience in networking, security, or cloud infrastructure; or a Master's degree with 7+ years of experience.

•  7+ years in networking/security with direct customer ownership.

•  Experience with DNS, routing, IPsec tunnels, TLS, SAML, SWG/Web Proxy, and cloud networking.

•  Experience across zero trust access, VPN, web inspection in the cloud, CASB, DLP, and firewall policy.

•  5+ years of experience with identity and SSO integrations (SAML/OIDC, SCIM) in enterprise deployments.

•  Prior experience handling on-premises and cloud security/networking products in production customer environments.

•  Demonstrated ability to influence customer expectations and recommend successful SaaS deployment and adoption strategies.

•  Experience supporting large multinational enterprise accounts with global SSE or SASE rollouts.

•  Ability to work effectively across time zones and cultures in a distributed engineering organization.

•  Coding experience with Bash, Python, or similar.

•  Packet capture/analysis (Wireshark/tcpdump or equivalent) and familiarity with DPI-related failure modes (decryption, certificate pinning, fragmentation, MTU).

•  Ability to advocate for both viewpoints—customer urgency and engineering feasibility—without distorting either.

•  Ability to communicate engineering updates to executive and technical customer audiences, and customer context to engineering.

At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint.

Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere. 

We are Cisco, and our power starts with you. 

Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks.  Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.

U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:

• 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees

• 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco

• Non-exempt employees** receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees

• Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)

• 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to the next

• Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members

• Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer

For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.

Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan. For quota-based incentive pay, Cisco typically pays as follows:

• .75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;

• 1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;

• 1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and

• Once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.

For non-quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.

The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:

New York City Metro Area:

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

* For quota-based sales roles on Cisco’s sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.

** Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.