Did the Cisco onsite for a senior SWE role on their security platform team in March. Virtual onsite, 5 hours total across 5 rounds back to back. Sharing the full structure because I couldn't find a complete picture before going in.
Round 1: Coding (45 min) -- two medium-level problems. First was a graph problem, second was a dynamic programming question. Standard stuff. Interviewer was remote, good video quality, CoderPad.
Round 2: System Design (60 min) -- prompt was network-adjacent (I wrote about this in more detail in another thread). Focus on distributed systems, data pipelines, latency requirements.
Round 3: Behavioral (45 min) -- dedicated behavioral round. STAR format. Values-focused. They ask about collaboration, ownership, handling conflict. No technical questions here at all.
Round 4: Deep Dive / Domain (45 min) -- this one surprised me. An interviewer who was clearly the hiring manager asked me to walk through a past project in depth. Not my overall experience, one specific project. Then probed the architecture decisions, what went wrong, what I'd do differently. This felt like the most "real" round of all of them.
Round 5: Bar Raiser equivalent (30 min) -- Cisco calls this something different but functionally it's a cross-team interviewer who isn't on your target team. Mostly behavioral and situational. "How would you handle a situation where your team's roadmap conflicted with another team's dependencies?" That kind of thing.
Debrief timeline: I heard back in about 10 business days. They extended an offer. I've seen people wait 3+ weeks so I think it varies by team and how clean the feedback was.
Prep tips: Do a few graph and DP problems, brush up on distributed systems basics, and actually prep 4-6 STAR stories. The behavioral round at Cisco is not an afterthought.
Feel free to ask questions.