Sr. Escalation Engineer

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. You'll 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, minimizing 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 Cisco's security platform.

• Lead P1/P2 incidents and complex customer escalations from intake to resolution or handoff, coordinating cross-functional teams and leadership.
• Assign actions, track progress, remove blockers, and provide timely, accurate stakeholder updates.
• Assess risks, drive mitigation plans, and lead post-incident reviews, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions.
• Develop and improve incident-management processes, playbooks, governance, and operational reporting.
• Lead crisis simulations and tabletop exercises to strengthen organizational readiness.
• Leverage automation and AI tools to improve incident response and prevent recurring issues.
• Mentor incident managers and engineers while partnering with Architecture, Product, and Engineering to enhance reliability, resilience, and observability.
• Drive continuous improvement and define strategic priorities for incident management across the organization.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree and 10 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.

Why Cisco?

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.

Disclaimer

To ensure that we hire the best talent in the right way, we follow a strict hiring process and recently, Cisco has been made aware of fraudulent recruiters claiming to be from the company. Please be advised that any communication from Cisco about careers will:

• be in direct response to an application you have submitted through the company career site
• begin with screening or an interview
• originate from a Cisco email address, and
• be conducted across email, phone, or WebEx

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