C

Cisco

Networking hardware, security software, collaboration services

Mechanical Engineering Technical Leader

Full-Time
$151.3k - $281.8k/yr+ Equity grants + Annual bonus
Senior, Expert
Bachelor's, Master's, PhD
San Jose, CA, USA
HybridHybrid work arrangement in San Jose.

About the job

Requirements
  • A bachelor's degree with 12 years of related experience, a master's degree with 8 years of related experience, or a PhD with 5 years of related experience.
  • Experience designing compute and networking products.
  • Expertise using three-dimensional mechanical computer-aided design tools such as Creo or NX.
  • Experience designing sheet metal for high-volume production.
  • Experience with geometric dimensioning and tolerancing and tolerance analysis.
Responsibilities
  • Lead junior engineers and provide technical consultation on complex mechanical engineering projects spanning multiple products or teams with significant resource requirements, risk, or complexity.
  • Drive industry standards, design specifications, and future technologies for next-generation Cisco products.
  • Work with key customers and suppliers to turn requirements into product features.
  • Provide advanced technical knowledge to engineering teams supporting product assembly, fabrication, and manufacturing.
  • Plan for and address supply chain management and quality issues as needed.
  • Oversee testing, failure analysis, reliability, and verification plans for developed design elements, materials, parts, and products.
  • Coordinate with stakeholders to address issues, including supplier-related issues.
  • Oversee design for manufacturing and bill-of-materials cost-avoidance strategy.
  • Oversee the selection and vetting of supplier materials when the bill of materials is submitted.
  • Collaborate with suppliers to ensure sample material characteristics meet Cisco requirements.
  • Collaborate with Technology and Quality and Global Supply Management teams to onboard new suppliers with key technology.
  • Define upfront value engineering to identify future cost savings.
  • Act as the technical expert in feasibility testing, prototyping, and root-cause-analysis investigations.
  • Set standards and approaches for technical justification analysis reports.
  • Identify the technology, materials, tools, and methodologies that give Cisco products a competitive edge.
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience with manufacturing tooling for sheet metal, plastic, and die-casting.
  • Knowledge of designing plastic and die-cast parts.
  • Mechanism design experience.
  • Experience performing static and dynamic analysis using tools such as Creo Simulate or ANSYS.
  • Expertise in tolerance analysis, geometric dimensioning and tolerancing, and statistical analysis.
  • Experience with input/output, mezzanine, and backplane interconnects.
  • Knowledge of thermal management.

About the company

Cisco designs and sells networking hardware, software, and services that help organizations connect, protect, and manage data. Its products include networking gear, security solutions, cloud services, and collaboration tools like Webex to support hybrid work. Cisco differentiates itself with a broad, integrated stack—routing and switching, security, cloud, and collaboration—that works together at scale. Its goal is to help customers securely connect people, devices, and applications, enabling reliable communication and digital transformation across enterprises of all sizes.

Company Size

10,001+

Company Stage

IPO

Headquarters

San Jose, California

Founded

1984

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Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Fiscal 2026 revenue reached $63.3 billion, up 12%, with Q4 orders up 35%.
  • Cisco booked $9.3 billion hyperscaler AI orders in fiscal 2026 and guides $7.5 billion revenue.
  • September 2026 AI POD for Splunk expands Cisco into on-premises enterprise AI infrastructure.

What critics are saying

  • Cisco cut nearly 4,000 jobs in May 2026, signaling ongoing internal disruption.
  • AI infrastructure was only 6% of fiscal 2026 revenue, limiting near-term mix transformation.
  • Margins face pressure from hardware mix and memory costs; a 2027 slowdown threatens the stock.

What makes Cisco unique

  • Cisco’s secure networking stack spans campus, data center, security, and collaboration products.
  • Cisco AI PODs bundle UCS, NVIDIA GPUs, and validated networking for enterprise AI deployments.
  • Cisco’s installed base and channel let it refresh campuses while monetizing AI infrastructure.

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Benefits

Paid Vacation

Hybrid Work Options

Flexible Work Hours

Professional Development Budget

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

↑ 0%

1 year growth

↑ 0%

2 year growth

↑ 0%
Yahoo Finance
Sep 30th, 2026
Cisco stock investors should watch 10% growth target outside AI business

Cisco Systems investors should focus on one key metric: growth outside AI infrastructure, which management expects to reach about 10% in fiscal 2027. Whilst AI infrastructure generates headlines, it represents only 6% of Cisco's revenue, with the remainder coming from networking and security products sold to enterprises and telecoms. The company's product orders rose 35% year-on-year in fiscal Q4 2026, with Wi-Fi 7 accounting for over half of wireless orders. Management forecasts fiscal 2027 revenue of $72.2 billion to $73.4 billion, with $7.5 billion from AI infrastructure. However, challenges loom. Comparisons become tougher in the second half of fiscal 2027, gross margins face pressure from increased hardware shipments, and price increases contributed about 5 percentage points to recent revenue growth. The stock trades at 31.8 times earnings, above the S&P 500's 21.9 multiple, leaving little margin for error.

Fortune
Sep 24th, 2026
Cisco CEO tells workers uncomfortable with change to adapt as AI transforms $415B company

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins has warned employees uncomfortable with rapid change that "nothing's going to feel good right now" as AI transforms the workplace. Speaking to Inc., Robbins said workers "have no choice but to at least keep up" with the pace of technological change driven by industry leaders. The head of the $415 billion company argues firms should view AI as an "innovation enhancement play" rather than a cost-reduction tool, enabling companies to deliver more with existing staff rather than cutting headcount. However, Cisco cut around 4,000 jobs earlier this year during a restructuring towards AI. Robbins noted that even AI leaders like Anthropic's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman have called for slower model development. Goldman Sachs economists estimate AI has eliminated approximately 16,000 net jobs monthly over the past year.

Yahoo Finance
Sep 24th, 2026
Cisco trades at 19x fiscal 2028 earnings, not 25x as trailing multiple suggests

Cisco Systems trades at $106 per share, or 24.6 times its fiscal 2026 non-GAAP earnings per share of $4.33. However, based on fiscal 2027 guidance and analyst forecasts, the valuation drops to 20.6 times earnings, with the company guiding non-GAAP earnings of $5.05 to $5.11 per share for that period. The company's fastest-growing segment is AI infrastructure for hyperscalers, which generated $9.3 billion in orders during fiscal 2026, 4.5 times the previous year's total. Management projects this business to deliver $7.5 billion in revenue for fiscal 2027. Cisco expects non-GAAP operating margins to reach approximately 35% in fiscal 2027, a company record. The company's remaining business is projected to grow around 10% in fiscal 2027, with campus networking product orders increasing 20% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026.

PR Newswire
Sep 22nd, 2026
Internet2 and Cisco deploy AI PODs at two US universities to expand National Research Platform capacity

Internet2 is expanding the National Research Platform (NRP) through a partnership with Cisco, deploying new AI PODs at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and Sacramento State. The AI PODs add GPU capacity that researchers can access when local resources are insufficient. The Cisco AI PODs provide pre-validated compute, networking, and management capabilities that can be deployed as standardised units. This approach reduces engineering and integration work required to add new resources to the platform. Combined, the AI PODs provide 8 NVIDIA H200 GPUs with 1.1 TB of GPU memory, 128 CPU cores, 2 TB of system memory, and 90 TB of NVMe flash storage. The NRP is a community-operated platform supported by the National Science Foundation and over 70 participating organisations, pooling computing resources across the US to give researchers access to capabilities beyond their local institutions.

Yahoo Finance
Sep 17th, 2026
Cisco trades at Dell's earnings multiple despite slower growth on AI infrastructure orders outpacing revenue

Cisco Systems trades at 32.1 times earnings, nearly matching Dell Technologies' 31.9 multiple, despite growing revenue just 11.8% over twelve months compared to Dell's 49%. The valuation gap partly reflects Cisco's superior 25.4% operating margin versus Dell's 9.6%. The company's premium also anticipates faster growth ahead. Cisco secured $9.3 billion in AI infrastructure orders from hyperscalers in fiscal 2026, 4.5 times the prior year's total, though revenue lagged at roughly $4 billion. For fiscal 2027, Cisco guides revenue between $72.2 billion and $73.4 billion, representing 15% growth. AI infrastructure revenue from hyperscalers is expected to reach $7.5 billion. However, price increases contributed 5 percentage points to Q4 growth and will add 4 to 5 points in fiscal 2027. Rising memory costs and hardware mix are pressuring gross margins.