Senior Technical Leader – Quality & Automation (Python, Kubernetes, Cloud)

Meet the Team

The Cisco Common Platform Services (CCPS) organization is transforming how Cisco delivers cloud-scale SaaS by providing a modern, consistent, and secure platform foundation. Within CCPS, the Cloud Software & Solutions (CSS) group designs and develops enterprise OpenStack and Kubernetes platform solutions engineered for quality, stability, scale, and performance.

We believe that world-class platform quality is achieved through teamwork, innovation, and psychological safety. You will serve as the technical authority for platform test engineering—shaping global test strategy, mentoring talented engineers, and building reusable automation frameworks that power important hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Your Impact

• Define end-to-end quality strategies, SLI/SLO benchmarks, and release readiness criteria across Kubernetes and OpenStack platform solutions.
• Develop, build, and scale modular, reusable test automation frameworks in Python, establishing coding standards and best practices across teams.
• Build automated suites for load, stress, scalability, endurance, failover, and chaos testing across distributed hybrid cloud platforms.
• metrics, logs, traces, profiles (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry), and OS-level evidence to isolate performance bottlenecks and drive fixes with development teams.
• Integrate repeatable test suites and statistical release criteria directly into active CI/CD pipelines.
• Coach engineers through architecture and code reviews, fostering a strong culture of automated testing excellence and shared platform ownership.

Minimum Qualifications (Must-Have Skills)

We are seeking 12+ years in Software Engineering, Platform Quality, or Reliability Engineering with proven experience in a Technical Lead or Architect capacity (Bachelor’s/master’s degree or equivalent practical experience welcomed).

• Demonstrated expertise designing, building, and maintaining modular, object-oriented test automation frameworks in Python embraced across multiple engineering teams.
• Deep hands-on knowledge of on-premises Kubernetes and OpenStack architecture, container runtimes, networking, storage, and distributed failure modes.
• Consistent record in performance, load, stress, and chaos engineering using tools like Locust, k6, JMeter, kube-burner, Robot Framework, fio, or iperf.
• Strong experience solving complex distributed systems using Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Linux kernel/OS diagnostics, and distributed tracing.
• Daily use of AI coding tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, OpenAI Codex) to accelerate test generation, script maintenance, and workflow optimization.

Preferred Qualifications (Optional Skills)

• Experience with storage and networking architectures like Ceph, CNI/CSI plugins, OVS/OVN, or bare-metal provisioning.
• Infrastructure as Code & automated lab provisioning experience using Terraform or Ansible.
• Expertise in statistical analysis, capacity planning, and automated benchmark visualizations.
• Relevant industry certifications (CKA/CKS, OpenStack, Linux Foundation, SRE, or Performance Engineering).

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.

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