Consulting Engineer
Cisco · Rome · €49,600–€65,600 (stated in the posting)
Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.
Note: This role will involve working for public sector clients hence you may need to undergo an extensive background check process or security clearance process.
Meet the Team
You will be an integral member of the Customer Delivery South team within Cisco Customer Experience (CX), reporting locally to Delivery Leadership in Rome. You will collaborate daily with:
- Enterprise & Public Sector Clients: Engineering teams, NetOps specialists, and IT directors from Italy's premier energy, banking, utility, government, and transportation organizations.
- Cisco Lead Technical Architects: Partnering with senior domain authorities on high-visibility architecture projects, receiving career mentoring and technical guidance.
- CX Project & Program Managers: Teaming up with local project managers to ensure on-time milestone delivery, technical risk mitigation, and smooth project governance.
- CX Centers (CXC) Engineering Hubs: Engaging with Krakow and Lisbon delivery teams for collaborative cross-theater implementations.
Your Impact
- Hands-on Engineering & Project Delivery: Lead and execute configuration, lab staging, hardware integration, and Day-2 acceptance testing (UAT) for enterprise campus backbones, core routing/switching, and WAN infrastructures based on Cisco Catalyst (9000 series) and ISR/ASR routing platforms.
- Design Translation & Technical Documentation: Author and review detailed Low-Level Design (LLD) specifications, Network Implementation Plans (NIP), Method of Procedure (MOP) execution runbooks, and as-built documentation for complex network modernizations.
- Critical Cutovers & Maintenance Windows: Own and execute mission-critical network migrations, software/firmware upgrades, and live cutovers during scheduled change windows, ensuring strict rollback preparedness and zero unplanned downtime.
- Secondary Domain Delivery: Apply hands-on engineering capabilities in at least ONE secondary technical domain (Data Center Nexus/ACI/VXLAN, Software-Defined Networking SDA/SD-WAN, or Network Security FTD/ISE) to support customer multi-architecture environments.
- Advanced Diagnostics & Problem Solving: Conduct deep-dive protocol analysis, packet captures (Wireshark/tcpdump), and complex Layer 2/3 troubleshooting across BGP peering, OSPF routing loops, VRF segmentation, and QoS behavior during staging and post-migration phases.
- Customer Trusted Relationship: Serve as a trusted technical point of contact for customer engineering and NetOps teams, delivering structured technical walkthroughs, knowledge transfer (KT) sessions, and operational handovers.
Minimum Qualifications:
- Professional Experience: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Telecommunications, Electronic Engineering (or equivalent technical background) along with 5 to 8 years of solid hands-on experience in network engineering, professional services, systems integration, or customer-facing technical delivery.
- Certification Level: Active Cisco CCNP Enterprise (Routing & Switching / Enterprise Core) certification required (or CCNP Data Center / CCNP Security / CCIE written in progress / equivalent validated industry mastery).
- Routing & Switching Mastery: In-depth knowledge and hands-on configuration of enterprise networking protocols: BGP (iBGP, eBGP, Route Reflectors, community attributes), OSPF (multi-area, LSA types, metric tuning), EIGRP, VRF-lite, VLANs, 802.1Q trunking, Spanning Tree (RSTP, MSTP), EtherChannel/LACP, HSRP/VRRP, IP SLA, Policy-Based Routing (PBR), and QoS.
- Platform Proficiency: Extensive deployment and troubleshooting experience on Cisco Catalyst 9200/9300/9400/9500/9600 series switches, Cisco ISR 4000 series, and Catalyst 8000 series edge routers running Cisco IOS-XE.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Data Center (DC / ACI / VXLAN): Hands-on experience with Cisco Nexus switches (NX-OS, vPC), legacy Data Center switching, or intermediate knowledge of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI / APIC fabrics, Tenant/VRF/EPG policies, L3Out) and EVPN VXLAN overlays.
- Software-Defined Networking (SDN): Practical knowledge of Cisco Software-Defined Access (SDA / Catalyst Center / DNA Center fabric workflows) OR Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN (Viptela architecture, vManage templates, edge router onboarding).
- Network Security: Hands-on experience with Cisco Secure Firewall (FTD / FMC / ASA), Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE - 802.1X wired/wireless authentication, profiling, posture enforcement), or Cisco Secure Access / SSE / SASE solutions.
- Excellent communication and strategic planning skills, while being self-motivated with a focus on execution.
Why Cisco?
At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint.
Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere.
We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.
The starting salary range posted for this position is €49,600.00 to €65,600.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position, not including incentive compensation*, equity, or benefits.Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.
For non-sales roles, employees may also be eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.
Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan. 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 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.
* For quota-based sales roles on Cisco’s sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.