Senior Wireless Automation Test Engineer

About the team:

At Cisco, our Cisco Wireless engineering teams deliver enterprise-grade connectivity and intelligence to a world that depends on always-on infrastructure. We innovate across access points, wireless controllers, and cloud-managed systems to simplify IT and enable rich digital experiences in offices, campuses, hospitals, stadiums, and beyond! Our impact is driven by the innovative, purposeful, and vibrant people who make up our inclusive community. When technology is intuitive, our customers can focus on what matters.

The Cisco Wireless group powers next-generation access point features and services with a strong focus on performance, scale, and security.

Our employees fuel the magic of the Cisco community. They have fostered an environment that empowers Cisconians to challenge limits, embrace risks, and assist our customers in pursuing their missions.

Our guiding principles are rooted in our four core values: 'care deeply,' 'everybody in,' 'simplify everything,' and 'be brave.' These pillars have propelled us to the forefront of cloud-managed IT leadership and have played a pivotal role in shaping a more inclusive future for all.

At Cisco Wireless, we simplify and secure wireless enterprise connectivity across the world. We are the market leader, and we serve a wide range of customers which includes office building for largest companies in the world, hospitals, universities, schools, factories, mines, hotels, retail shops, stadiums, large public venues.

Our wireless access point software team builds a wide range of Wi-Fi access points including the latest Wi-Fi 7 APs (Access Points). Our software team covers platform bring up for everything from boot loaders to web servers on prototype hardware, kernel, driver integration, Wi-Fi features, wireless security, BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) radio, and other sophisticated functions integrated into our product.

In this team, you will get exposed to software for most advanced technologies for wireless infrastructure devices. Same team will also automate and qualify these platforms. Your contributions as part of this team will have direct impact into connectivity experience for critically important applications across the world.

About the role:

As a Senior Wireless Automation Test Engineer, you will play a pivotal role in building high-performance software for Cisco’s wireless platforms. Your focus will be on software development and testing— crafting, designing, implementing, and optimizing features across the wireless stack and contributing to platform capabilities. You will be responsible to drive Automated continuous Integration and continuous delivery framework for world class Cisco Wireless products.

You will collaborate across hardware, firmware, and cloud teams and bring a software-first mentality to solving real-world wireless challenges. Experience with Generative AI-assisted coding tools will help you accelerate development and improve engineering impact.

Key Responsibilities:

• Review product requirements document and understand the customer use case.
• Work with senior software architect to help in designing and drafting software functional specifications for a particular feature.
• Work with senior software development engineers to develop the feature and participate in early unit test and integration test.
• Design, develop, and execute comprehensive test plans and test cases for Cisco wireless products and solutions.
• Perform functional, regression, performance, and interoperability testing for Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax) products and features.
• Automate use cases using Pythons or Ruby.
• Design, develop, and maintain robust Automated CICD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Development) framework for wireless platforms (access points, controllers, Cloud based products).
• Analyze and troubleshoot complex wireless networking issues, identifying root causes and driving resolution.
• Collaborate with development, product management, and support teams to define test requirements and quality metrics.
• Participate in innovative Software test initiatives.
• Share your knowledge by giving brown-bags, tech talks, and evangelizing engineering standard methodologies.
• Accountable for the stability of our product with a high customer focus.
• Work on other quality assurance activities such as reproduce customer issues, scale and performance test, end to end system testing and interop testing.
• Leverage Generative AI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, Cursor) to improve efficiency, accelerate prototyping, and promote code quality.
• Collaborate with hardware, test, and cloud teams to ensure flawless integration and performance across the system.
• Contribute to automated validation frameworks and test tools to support CI/CD and system integration testing.

Required Skills:

• 7+ years of experience in software development and Testing
• Extensive hands-on experience with Wi-Fi standards and protocols (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax), including security (WPA2/WPA3, 802.1X)
• Strong networking knowledge and Cisco switches / routers
• Working experience in core network protocols (TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, ARP, Radius)
• Experience in DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code tools (Jenkins, Xpresso, Docker, Jira, GitHub, Gerrit, Terraform, Ansible).
• Experience in deploying wireless solutions on cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud), including integration with cloud networking and management services
• Exposure to test process, test tools, test automation framework, CI/CD pipeline and end to end system validation
• Strong programming skills in Python and C/C++
• Knowledge of software development process and quality assurance process
• Working experience in various OS like Windows OS, Linux, Android and IOS
• Consistent track record to adopt and use Generative AI tools optimally for development and debugging
• Document test results, file detailed bug reports, and track issue resolution.
• Stay up to date with emerging wireless technologies, standards, and industry best practices
• Strong analytical skills with a focus on design correctness, performance, and maintainability
• Excellent teamwork and communication across multi-disciplinary teams

Bonus points for:

• Certifications such as CCNP Wireless, CWNA, or equivalent are a plus
• Certifications such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect or equivalent are highly desirable
• Experience in customer-facing roles, presenting at industry conferences, or contributing to standards bodies (e.g., IEEE, Wi-Fi Alliance).
• Familiarity with big data analytics, telemetry, and AI/ML-driven network management.
• Experience with large-scale, multi-site wireless network deployments.
• Familiarity with IoT connectivity, wireless mesh, and emerging wireless standards.
• Experience with API testing and automated monitoring/alerting in production environments
• Experience with performance and scalability testing of cloud applications.

Does this sound like you? We’d love to hear from you!

At Cisco Wireless, we’re challenging the status quo with the power of diversity, inclusion, and collaboration. When we connect different perspectives, we can imagine new possibilities, inspire innovation, and release the full potential of our people. We’re building an employee experience that includes appreciation, belonging, growth, and purpose for everyone.

Cisco is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, genetic information, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected basis. Cisco will consider for employment, on a case by case basis, qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada: 
When available, the salary range posted for this position reflects the projected hiring range for new hire, full-time salaries in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including equity or benefits. For non-sales roles the hiring ranges reflect base salary only; employees are also eligible to receive annual bonuses. Hiring ranges for sales positions include base and incentive compensation target. Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location and additional factors, including but not limited to skillset, experience, and relevant education, certifications, or training. Applicants may not be eligible for the full salary range based on their U.S. or Canada hiring location. The recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees have access to quality medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance and numerous wellbeing offerings.

Employees receive up to twelve paid holidays per calendar year, which includes one floating holiday (for non-exempt employees), plus a day off for their birthday. Non-Exempt new hires accrue up to 16 days of vacation time off each year, at a rate of 4.92 hours per pay period. Exempt new hires participate in Cisco’s flexible Vacation Time Off policy, which does not place a defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use, but is subject to availability and some business limitations. All new hires are eligible for Sick Time Off subject to Cisco’s Sick Time Off Policy and will have eighty (80) hours of sick time off provided on their hire date and on January 1st of each year thereafter.  Up to 80 hours of unused sick time will be carried forward from one calendar year to the next such that the maximum number of sick time hours an employee may have available is 160 hours. Employees in Illinois have a unique time off program designed specifically with local requirements in mind. All employees also have access to paid time away to deal with critical or emergency issues. We offer additional paid time to volunteer and give back to the community.

Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components. For quota-based incentive pay, Cisco typically pays as follows:

.75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;

1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;

1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.

For non-quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.