Forward Deployed Engineer – SSE

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Alabama, +45 more states.

📋 Description

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

• Provide recommendations for deployment best practices, identify issues, determine root causes, suggest workarounds, clarify product limitations, and outline delivery schedules for clients.

• Incorporate customer production context, business implications, operational challenges, and technical needs into product development and prioritization dialogues.

• Manage complex escalations using precise, reproducible technical evidence.

• Foster the technical relationship with designated large and/or strategic SSE accounts, overseeing critical issues from start to finish.

• Promote proactive account health through effective deployment and rollout planning, ensuring consistency in configuration and policy.

• Develop engineering escalations that include timelines, impacts, reproduction details, logs, packet captures, and redacted configurations.

• Communicate engineering results back to clients.

• Integrate recurring customer trends into product and engineering roadmaps as specific requirements.

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

• Write scripts in Bash/Python for diagnostics, health assessments, automation, and lab reproduction.

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

• Travel to customer locations and engineering hubs.

⛳️ Requirements

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

• Over 7 years of experience in networking/security with direct customer engagement.

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

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

• More than 5 years of experience with identity and SSO integrations, including SAML/OIDC and SCIM, in enterprise deployments.

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

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

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

• Capable of working effectively across various time zones and cultures within a distributed engineering organization.

• Able to advocate for customer urgency while considering engineering feasibility.

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

• Willing to travel internationally up to 50% of the time.

🏝️ 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.

• Potential availability of Cisco restricted stock unit grants.

• 10 paid holidays per full calendar year.

• 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees.

• Paid employee birthday.

• Paid year-end holiday shutdown.

• 4 paid days off for personal wellness.

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

• Flexible vacation time off program for 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 leave 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 growth and development on a global scale.