Forward Deployed Engineer, Secure Services Edge

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Texas.

📋 Description

• Act as the technical intermediary between Cisco SSE product management, engineering, and key enterprise SSE customers.

• Advise clients on deployment best practices, identify issues, analyze root causes, suggest workarounds, clarify product limitations, and outline delivery timelines.

• Incorporate customer production contexts, business impacts, operational limitations, and technical needs into product development and prioritization conversations.

• Manage complex escalations by providing precise, reproducible technical evidence.

• Convert requirements, root cause analyses, and technical decisions between customer and engineering settings.

• Oversee the technical relationship for a designated group of large or strategic SSE accounts, addressing critical issues from start to finish.

• Enhance deployment and rollout strategies, ensuring consistency in configuration and policy.

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

• Communicate engineering results back to customers.

• Integrate recurring customer trends into product and engineering roadmaps.

• Develop and maintain CX-driven runbooks and documentation for future SSE implementations.

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

• Script diagnostics, health checks, automations, and lab reproductions using Bash or Python.

• Collaborate globally across regions and time zones following a follow-the-sun escalation model.

• Travel extensively to customer locations and engineering centers.

⛳️ Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical field with over 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 or security with direct customer engagement.

• In-depth knowledge of 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 environments.

• Previous experience with both on-premises and cloud security/networking products in live customer settings.

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

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

• Ability to operate across time zones and cultures within a distributed engineering structure.

• 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.

• Capacity to advocate for customer urgency and engineering feasibility.

• Skill in conveying engineering updates to both executive and technical customer audiences, as well as customer context to engineering teams.

🏝️ Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance.

• 401(k) plan with Cisco matching contributions.

• Paid parental leave.

• Short- and long-term disability coverage.

• Basic life insurance.

• Potential for Cisco restricted stock unit grants.

• 10 paid holidays per full calendar year.

• 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees.

• Paid day off for employee birthdays.

• Paid shutdown during year-end holidays.

• 4 paid personal wellness days.

• 16 days of paid vacation 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 upon hire and each January 1st thereafter.

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

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

• Optional 10 paid volunteer days annually.

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

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

• Opportunities for professional growth and development.

• Access to a worldwide network of professionals and experts.