Principal Software Engineer
Cisco
Listing collected from Cisco's career site. NextChapter is independent of Cisco.
Milpitas, CA · Posted November 5, 2026
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Where Milpitas, CA ranks
Where Milpitas, CA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #12Best cities for mid-career professionals in the West Coast60% · of 71
- #17Best cities for manufacturing and industrial pay after cost of living$132k · of 35
- #19Best cities for pay after cost of living in California$149k · of 32
- #20Best all-round cities for mid-career professionals in the West Coast46 / 100 · of 39
- #20Best all-round cities for AI careers in the West Coast44 / 100 · of 39
- #21Cities with the most jobs that need no experience in the West Coast0.8% · of 66
Rankings about engineering jobs
- Best cities for software and engineering jobs #1 San Francisco (3,412 openings)
- Best cities for engineering pay after cost of living #1 San Mateo ($216k)
- Most requested AI skills in engineering jobs #1 AI tools in daily work (6.1%)
- AI tools named most often in engineering jobs #1 Claude (1.7%)
- Employers with the most engineering jobs #1 Amazon (2,992 roles)
Pay compared with the market
This listing does not state pay. Across 51 open principal software engineer listings that state pay, the middle half runs $205,500 to $274,000 and the median is $240,000.
Listed pay is what employers advertise, not what people are paid.
Principal Software Engineer salaries by state · Check your own pay
How AI is used in this kind of work
Among software developers, AI is already used for some of the tasks. Measured exposure for software developers: 29% (some).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
Skills this job asks for
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About the job
Seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead the design and development of scalable, secure cloud security applications. Oversee architecture, code quality, and deployment, while mentoring junior developers. Ideal for experienced leaders with deep expertise in AWS, distributed systems, and technical strategy.