Software Engineering Technical Leader
Cisco · Minato, Japan ·
- Category
- Software engineering
- Experience
- 10+ years
- Visa sponsorship
- Yes
- Company size
- 1000+
A bilingual technical leader in Japan who troubleshoots Cisco’s security products, translates between customers and engineering, and drives escalations while advocating for both sides.
Software Engineering Technical Leader
Cisco Security Business Group (SBG) is looking for a Software Engineering Technical Leader in a customer-facing role that
focuses on technical leadership, two-way advocacy, and expertise across our security portfolio. This role combines deep
networking and security knowledge with the ability to represent engineering to customers and customers to engineering.
Cisco offers a comprehensive end-to-end security portfolio covering on-premises, cloud, on-device, and hybrid environments -
including VPN, zero trust, web inspection in the cloud, firewall, CASB, and DLP. This flexibility allows customers to select
solutions tailored to their needs and transition seamlessly as requirements evolve.
Location
Japan-based role. You work from Japan, aligned to Japanese enterprise customers and their operating hours, with regular
coordination across global engineering teams.
Role
Two-way technical liaison between large Japanese enterprise customers and our English-speaking engineering organization.
You operate from both viewpoints: represent engineering to the customer, and represent the customer in engineering
discussions - with strong customer advocacy at the center. You own complex escalations and translate requirements, RCAs,
and technical decisions Japanese <-> English without losing context on either side.
Two-way liaison
- To the customer: explain engineering findings, root causes, workarounds, fix timelines, and product constraints in clear
Japanese - aligned with what engineering actually intends to deliver.
- To engineering: carry customer environment context, business impact, operational constraints, and requirements in clear
English - so fixes and designs reflect real production needs.
- Balance both sides under escalation: set realistic expectations with the customer while giving engineering accurate,
reproducible evidence.
- Advocate strongly for the customer: push for timely resolution, clear communication, and outcomes that protect their
production environment - without overstating issues to engineering.
Key responsibilities
- Lead L3/L4 troubleshooting across VPN, zero trust access, web inspection in the cloud, CASB, DLP, firewall policy, and
hybrid cloud deployments.
- Perform packet capture and packet analysis; use deep packet inspection context to isolate connectivity, performance, and
policy issues (IPsec tunnels, IPv4/IPv6, DNS, TLS/SNI, routing, NAT, IP pools).
- Drive proactive account health: capacity, upgrade readiness, config/policy drift, and repeat-incident prevention.
- Capture customer configurations and run daily regression checks to confirm everything is working as intended - surfacing
issues before they affect the customer environment.
- Build clean escalations for engineering - timeline, impact, repro, logs, pcaps, redacted configs - and translate outcomes
back to the customer.
- Use AI-assisted log analysis with strong judgment; don't ship unverified conclusions to either side.
- Script (Bash/Python) for diagnostics, health checks, and lab reproduction.
- Mentor junior liaison engineers on two-way communication and technical depth.
Minimum qualifications
Our mission: make security management easy, reliable, and effective for our customers.
Values: "Being kinder than necessary" | "Learning together" | "Engineering the business" | Celebrating diversity of perspectives
Cisco Confidential Page 1/2Cisco Security Business Group (SBG)
Job Description
Software Engineering Technical Leader
- Fluent Japanese and English - equally credible presenting engineering updates to customers and customer context to
engineering.
- Proven ability to advocate both viewpoints: customer urgency and engineering feasibility, without distorting either. Strong
customer advocacy is core to this role.
- 10+ years in networking/security with direct customer ownership.
- Strong TCP/IP (IPv4/IPv6), DNS, routing, IPsec tunnels, TLS, and cloud networking (AWS).
- Hands-on Kubernetes operations: scaling, connectivity, basic cluster troubleshooting.
- Packet capture/analysis (Wireshark/tcpdump or equivalent) and comfort with DPI-related failure modes (decryption,
pinning, fragmentation, MTU).
- Experience across VPN, zero trust, web inspection in the cloud, CASB, DLP, and firewall policy.
- Bash; Python a plus.
Preferred qualifications
- Prior experience managing Cisco on-prem and cloud security/networking products in production customer environments.
- Large Japanese enterprise accounts (finance, manufacturing, telco).
- Observability stacks (Grafana, Loki, Prometheus or similar).
Summary
A Software Engineering Technical Leader is an experienced, influential technical leader who bridges customers and
engineering in Japan. You combine deep networking troubleshooting, bilingual precision, strong customer advocacy, and calm
judgment under escalation - keeping both sides aligned on next steps.
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.