Software Engineer

Overview

Software Engineer on Cisco's cnBNG Control Plane team, owning design, delivery and end-to-end quality of carrier-grade subscriber-management features in a cloud-native architecture.

What you'll do

• Design, develop and maintain cnBNG Control Plane microservices (C/C++/Go) on the SMI/Kubernetes platform, interworking with IOS-XR and Silicon One-based User Plane Functions.
• Implement and enhance subscriber-management functionality: PPPoE/IPoE session bring-up, DHCPv4/DHCPv6 (server/proxy/relay), Prefix Delegation, RADIUS/AAA, PAP/CHAP, accounting, Change of Authorization, IPAM, subscriber policy and QoS.
• Develop and harden CP-UP separation over the State Control Interface, including session programming, state download/replay and reconciliation between the Control Plane and Silicon One UPFs.
• Build features for scale and high availability: cluster upscale, N:M and geo/warm redundancy (SRG), CP-GR switchover, and subscriber-session continuity during CP-UP communication failures.
• Write unit tests and component/integration tests; design and execute system, regression, scale, performance, resiliency and high-availability tests for your features.
• Develop reusable test automation in Python (pyATS/Genie or equivalent) and integrate it into CI/CD pipelines and regression suites.
• Build and maintain containerized, virtual and cloud-based test environments (Docker, Kubernetes, SMI) and validate subscriber-scale, traffic, failover, upgrade/rollback, process-restart and subscriber-churn scenarios.
• Optimize control-plane performance, memory and convergence for millions of subscribers across large UPF fleets.
• Develop and maintain gRPC/REST APIs and YANG/OpenConfig models, plus CLI and model-driven telemetry for configuration and operational visibility.
• Troubleshoot complex, distributed issues across the CP, Silicon One UPFs and the SMI/Kubernetes stack, driving RCA using logs, traces, core dumps, RADIUS transactions and telemetry.
• Manage code with Git, participate in code reviews, and collaborate with Test Engineering on feature, scale and HA validation.
• Work with architects, DE/DT leads and PLM to deliver features across the release lifecycle (BC/CC, AC/EC, DEVELOPING, FCS).
• Use approved AI coding assistants and engineering agents for code generation, test creation, static analysis, log analysis, defect triage and documentation, validating AI-generated output responsibly.

What you'll need

• Bachelor's or master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical/Computer Engineering, Telecommunications, or a related field.
• Experience in systems/embedded or cloud-native software engineering for networking products.
• Strong programming in C/C++ and/or Go on Linux; Python for test automation and scripting.
• Hands-on experience writing unit, integration, system and scale/performance tests, and building automation (pyATS/Genie or equivalent) integrated into CI/CD and regression pipelines.
• Solid understanding of IP networking and subscriber/broadband protocols: PPPoE, IPoE, DHCPv4/v6, RADIUS/AAA, PPP, L2TP.
• Working knowledge of Cisco Silicon One (SiOne) NPU-based User Plane Functions, including data-plane/forwarding architecture, CP-to-UPF programming, and how subscriber sessions map to NPU forwarding.
• Cloud-native fundamentals: Docker, Kubernetes, microservices and service meshes.
• Experience building and consuming gRPC/REST APIs and data models (YANG, protobuf).
• Distributed-systems concepts: high availability, redundancy, state reconciliation and scale.
• Strong Linux skills; experience with Git, code reviews, debugging and CI/CD pipelines.
• AI-assisted engineering: hands-on use of AI coding assistants (e.g., GitHub Copilot) and a working understanding of generative AI, AI agents, MCP (Model Context Protocol), reusable AI skills, prompt/context management, and responsible validation of AI-generated output.

Nice to have

• Hands-on with BNG/CUPS, CP-UP separation, SRG geo/warm redundancy, or 5G/BNG converged-core architectures.
• Experience with SMI (Subscriber Microservices Infrastructure) or similar cloud-native telco platforms.
• Familiarity with Silicon One platform families (Cisco 8000 / ASR 9000 / NCS) as User Planes.
• Scale/performance characterization and traffic/subscriber-simulation tools (IXIA/Spirent).
• Databases/caching for network state (SQL/NoSQL, key-value stores, etcd); AAA/policy, IPAM at scale and QoS.
• Model-driven telemetry, NETCONF/RESTCONF/gNMI, OpenConfig; Aha/Jira API suites.

Details

• Location: Bangalore, India.