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# Senior Software Engineer, AI Cluster Networking Performance Engineer

- **Company:** Cisco Systems, Inc.
- **Location:** San Jose, CA, United States
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Salary:** $167,700.0 - $245,200.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, C++ (Programming Language), Profiling, Protocol Stack, Software Debugging, Linux, Microprocessors, Ethernet, InfiniBand, Python (Programming Language), Linux Kernel, PCI Express, Remote Direct Memory Access, Wireshark, Web Services, Infrastructure Automation Frameworks, Software Coding, Cisco
- **Published:** October 10, 2026
- **Apply:** https://dejobs.org/x/x/9585C00423A44D1B9E4D3FEF445B2374/job/

## About the Role

* Bachelors + 7 years of related experience, or Masters + 4 years of related experience, or PHD +1 year of related experience or equivalent related work experience.
 * 4+ years of experience working with Linux kernel, networking, GPU, and distributed-systems debugging skills.
 * Experience writing code with C/C++/Python and experience with user-mode and kernel-mode drivers.
 * Experience with Linux network stack, RDMA/RoCEv2, NCCL, PCIe, and performance profiling.
 * Prior experience working with reason from packet captures, traces, counters, logs, and reproducible benchmarks., * SmartNIC/DPU optimization and DOCA SDK experience.
 * Cisco switching, AI cluster network fabrics, multi-plane/ToR designs, and high-speed Ethernet or InfiniBand environments.
 * Familiarity with NVIDIA diagnostic tooling, Nsight/profiling tools, kernel tracing, and observability platforms.

## Description

Cisco Validated Infrastructure Services (CVIS) establishes and proves the performance of large AI clusters before they are handed over to customers. We deploy each cluster, validate it against performance baselines, and deliver the evidence that it is ready for service. The platform behind that work is full stack. It combines workflow and API services, network and infrastructure automation, and the UI used to run validation across labs and customer environments., As a Senior Software Engineer, you will be responsible for things like debugging, profiling and optimizing the full AI cluster networking and GPU performance stack, from boot-time and PCIe behavior through Linux kernel, SmartNIC/DPU, RDMA, NCCL, and application-level collective communication. You will:

 * Investigate kernel-level failures, boot-time anomalies, PCIe link issues, driver behavior, and network latency.
 * Diagnose and tune RDMA/RoCEv2, NCCL, SmartNIC/DPU, NIC queues, congestion, throughput, and collective communications.
 * Read and correlate unified hardware traces across host CPUs, PCIe switches, SmartNICs, and GPU compute streams.
 * Capture and analyze Wireshark packets, system logs, NVIDIA support logs, traces, profiles, and observability data.
 * Partner with hardware and software teams to eliminate end-to-end bottlenecks.