Senior Director, Engineering (Customer Engineering - AI Team)

The application window is expected to close on: 09/10/2026 Meet the Team Cisco’s AI Software & Platform Group builds enterprise AI platforms and developer tooling, integrating our networking, security, and observability portfolio with modern AI to power autonomous systems. We improve reinforcement learning, simulation, and predictive analytics to make enterprise AI accurate, grounded, and trustworthy. Within this group, we are building Customer Engineering (CE) as a strategic, AI-native engineering organization designed to revolutionize how we diagnose, resolve, and prevent complex technical escalations for our most demanding global enterprise customers. Sitting at the direct intersection of Engineering, Product Management, Customer Experience (CX/TAC), and Sales, this founding leadership role will define, scale, and lead the global operating model from the ground up. In this role, you will be the senior engineering voice when top-tier customers need answers during high-stakes production events, while pioneering AI-driven diagnostic automation and developer tooling that allows our engineering organization to scale non-linearly. Your Impact As the Head of Customer Engineering, you will: Build & Scale the Operating Model: Establish the end-to-end CE function from scratch, defining triage tiers, response/resolution SLAs, and a "treat and discharge" motion that empowers engin [... source excerpt omitted ...] afety guardrails. Lead High-Stakes Escalations & RCAs: Serve as the senior engineering authority for strategic enterprise accounts, leading the resolution of complex multi-tenant production issues and presenting Root Cause Analyses (RCAs) directly to customer C-suite and technical executives. Drive AI-Native Automation: Architect and deploy AI agents, intelligent diagnostic tooling, and automated workflows that dramatically reduce Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) and eliminate repetitive triage without linear headcount growth. Bridge CE and Core Engineering: Establish a high-integrity escalation interface where handoffs to core R&D arrive fully pre-triaged (reproduced, scoped, and [... source excerpt omitted ...] between CE and core engineering teams. Pioneer the Core Engineering Rotation Program: Design and lead a continuous rotation program embedding core R&D engineers into CE for live customer troubleshooting, facilitating two-way knowledge transfer and real-world system resilience insights. Close the Product Feedback Loop: Partner with Product Management and R&D to translate recurring field telemetry, incident post-mortems, and customer pain points into platform-level roadmap enhancements that permanently eliminate repeat escalations. Recruit & Develop Top Talent: Hire, mentor, and lead a high-caliber team of customer-facing engineers and frontline managers, establishing on-call p