Forward Deployed Engineer, Secure Services Edge

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Maine, +3 more states.

📋 Description

• Act as the technical intermediary between Cisco SSE product management and key enterprise SSE clients.

• Serve as the product organization's representative to clients by providing recommendations on deployment best practices, identifying issues, determining root causes, suggesting workarounds, outlining product limitations, and establishing delivery timelines.

• Convey the customer's production context, business implications, operational limitations, and technical needs to the product organization.

• Manage complex escalations using precise, reproducible technical evidence while championing customer-focused solutions.

• Interpret requirements, root-cause analyses, and technical decisions between customer and engineering domains.

• Oversee the technical relationship for a designated group of major and/or strategic SSE accounts, managing critical issues from start to finish.

• Enhance deployment and rollout planning, configuration, and policy consistency to foster account health.

• Construct engineering escalations that include timelines, impacts, reproductions, logs, packet captures, and redacted configurations.

• Communicate engineering outcomes back to clients.

• Contribute recurring customer patterns into product and engineering roadmaps as actionable requirements.

• Develop and maintain CX-driven runbooks and deployment documentation.

• Utilize AI-assisted log analysis with sound judgment to validate conclusions.

• Create diagnostic scripts, health checks, automations, and lab reproductions using Bash or Python.

• Collaborate with globally distributed engineering teams in a follow-the-sun escalation model.

• Travel extensively to customer locations and engineering hubs.

⛳️ Requirements

• 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 of experience in networking/security with direct engagement with customers.

• Strong expertise in DNS, routing, IPsec tunnels, TLS, SAML, SWG/Web Proxy, and cloud networking.

• Familiarity with zero trust access, VPN, cloud web inspection, CASB, DLP, and firewall policy.

• 5+ years of experience with identity and SSO integrations, including SAML/OIDC and SCIM, in enterprise settings.

• Experience managing both on-premises and cloud security/networking products in active customer environments.

• Capability to influence customer expectations and propose SaaS deployment and adoption strategies.

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

• Ability to work across different time zones and cultures in a distributed engineering environment.

• Proficiency in coding with Bash, Python, or similar languages.

• Experience in packet capture and analysis using Wireshark, tcpdump, or equivalent tools.

• Understanding of DPI-related failure modes, including decryption, certificate pinning, fragmentation, and MTU issues.

• Capacity to advocate for customer needs while considering engineering feasibility.

• Skill in communicating engineering updates to both executive and technical customer audiences and relaying customer context to engineering teams.

• Willingness to work globally across regions and time zones.

• Readiness to travel extensively to customer sites and engineering hubs.

🏝️ Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.

• 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution.

• Paid parental leave.

• Short- and long-term disability coverage.

• Basic life insurance.

• Cisco restricted stock unit grants may be available.

• 10 paid holidays each full calendar year.

• 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees.

• 1 paid day off for employee birthdays.

• Paid year-end holiday shutdown.

• 4 paid days off for personal wellness.

• 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year for non-exempt employees.

• Flexible vacation time off program with no defined limit for eligible exempt employees.

• 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter.

• Up to 80 hours of unused sick time can be carried forward.

• Additional paid time off for critical or emergency family matters.

• Optional 10 paid volunteer days per full calendar year.

• Annual bonuses for non-sales roles, subject to Cisco policies.

• Performance-based incentive pay for employees on sales plans.

• Opportunities for professional growth and development.

• Collaborate and learn within a global team environment.