careerladder.fyi › Career paths › Cisco
How people got jobs at Cisco
What 95 people did before they joined Cisco: where they worked, what they studied, which role they came in through, and how long it took.
95
people in our data got there
49%
had a graduate degree first (of those listing one)
13
typical years since first job
- The most common step right before: from other companies (72%).
- The most common way in was Sales & business development (27% joined in that kind of role).
- Of those who list their education, 49% had a graduate degree before arriving and 14% a PhD.
- The typical person arrived about 13 years after their first job.
- The most common earlier employer: IBM (8% had worked there).
How Cisco compares
- People arrived about 4 years later in their careers than at the typical one of the other banks & Fortune 500 companies (13 vs 8 years since their first job).
Among people who list their education; places with at least 10 such people.
Show as a table
| People listing education | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Qualcomm | 36 | 69% |
| Morgan Stanley | 16 | 62% |
| Intel Corporation | 49 | 61% |
| Hewlett Packard Enterprise | 36 | 61% |
| Micron Technology | 25 | 60% |
| JPMorgan Chase & Co. | 20 | 55% |
| AMD | 26 | 54% |
| Dell Technologies | 30 | 53% |
| IBM | 60 | 53% |
| Goldman Sachs | 20 | 50% |
| Citi | 16 | 50% |
| Cisco (this page) | 43 | 49% |
| NextEra Energy, Inc. | 41 | 49% |
| Deutsche Bank | 16 | 38% |
| Schneider Electric | 28 | 32% |
Show as a table
| Median years | ||
|---|---|---|
| AMD | 20 yrs | |
| NextEra Energy, Inc. | 19 yrs | |
| Micron Technology | 16 yrs | |
| Hewlett Packard Enterprise | 15 yrs | |
| Cisco (this page) | 13 yrs | |
| Qualcomm | 11 yrs | |
| Schneider Electric | 11 yrs | |
| Dell Technologies | 9 yrs | |
| Intel Corporation | 8 yrs | |
| Citi | 7 yrs | |
| JPMorgan Chase & Co. | 6 yrs | |
| Morgan Stanley | 5 yrs | |
| IBM | 5 yrs | |
| Deutsche Bank | 5 yrs | |
| Goldman Sachs | 4 yrs |
Which role they joined in
Kinds of role with fewer than 5 people are combined into "All other roles".
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Sales & business development | 26 | 27% |
| Software engineering | 21 | 22% |
| All other roles | 33 | 35% |
| Business & operations | 8 | 8% |
| IT & infrastructure | 7 | 7% |
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Software Engineer | 7 | 7% |
What they did right before
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| From other companies | 68 | 72% |
| From banks & Fortune 500 | 10 | 11% |
| From Big Tech | 8 | 8% |
| Other | 9 | 9% |
Where they worked before
A person can count under more than one employer.
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| IBM | 8 | 8% |
Education
Among the 43 of 95 people who list their education.
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's | 22 | 51% |
| Master's | 8 | 19% |
| MBA | 7 | 16% |
| PhD | 6 | 14% |
How much experience they had
Among the 89 of 95 people with an earlier job listed.
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| 1-3 years | 6 | 7% |
| 3-5 years | 10 | 11% |
| 5-8 years | 19 | 21% |
| 8-12 years | 8 | 9% |
| 12+ years | 46 | 52% |
Where would your path lead?
Paste your LinkedIn or resume and see the ladders people like you climbed to Cisco, and how each step changes your chances.
Plan my path to Cisco →
Paste your LinkedIn or resume and see the ladders people like you climbed to Cisco, and how each step changes your chances.
Plan my path to Cisco →
Related
How these numbers are made. From 3k+ public career histories collected for careerladder.fyi (dated jobs, degrees and publications). The collection was built around particular employers, so people who reached well-known tech, AI and finance employers are over-represented: read shares as "among people in this dataset", not as hiring odds. Names are shown only when at least 5 people are behind them; smaller groups are combined into "Other". No individual profile is shown. Updated November 2026.