This is a hybrid position based out of Cisco's Seattle or San Jose office.

Meet the Team

The Cisco AI Research team is a dynamic group of scientists and engineers dedicated to building the future of proprietary intelligence. Our core mission is to develop purpose-built large language models tailored specifically for Cisco’s networking, security, and observability domains. We operate at the intersection of basic and applied research, ensuring that Cisco maintains its technological edge without reliance on external AI providers. Our team is composed of doers and experts who thrive in a collaborative environment, blending deep technical rigor with a shared passion for solving complex, real-world problems at a global scale.

Your Impact

As a Principal AI Researcher, you will define the technical vision and overarching architecture for Cisco’s proprietary intelligence, serving as a primary catalyst for how we secure and automate the global network. Moving beyond leading individual projects, you will define the multi-year research strategy, pioneering novel approaches in foundation model development, agentic workflows, and self-improving systems. You will bridge the gap between theoretical generative AI breakthroughs and hyperscale production deployments, guiding the evolution from generalized models to highly specialized, domain-expert architectures. By orchestrating complex, end-to-end pre-training and alignment initiatives, you will cement our technology at the absolute vanguard of the AI era, directly impacting the performance, security, and intelligence of the world’s digital backbone.

• Define and drive the overarching strategic research roadmap for purpose-built large language models securing and optimizing Cisco’s networking, security, data center, and observability infrastructure.

• Spearhead massive-scale pre-training, continued pre-training (CPT), and advanced reinforcement learning initiatives to establish industry-leading foundational models.

• Architect advanced agentic frameworks and autonomous operations, pushing the boundaries of reasoning capabilities and intelligent routing layers for IT environments.

• Serve as a principal technical advisor to executive leadership, translating abstract AI research breakthroughs into scalable, enterprise-grade product ecosystems.

• Elevate Cisco’s position as a premier global leader by publishing high-impact research, spearheading workshop proposals at top-tier AI venues, and driving the broader scientific discourse.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in STEM with 15+ years of experience, a Master’s degree with 12+ years of experience, or a PhD in STEM or a related technical field with 8+ years of highly relevant research experience.

• Experience architecting and leading multiple full-cycle pre-training, continual pre-training, or reinforcement learning pipelines for massive-scale foundational models, dictating dataset curation, distributed training strategies, and alignment execution.

• Minimum of 6 publications in top-tier AI venues (ACL, EMNLP, ICLR, ICML, NAACL, NeurIPS), with a history of significant citations or influential contributions.

• 5+ years of experience engineering and scaling training pipelines using PyTorch or similar frameworks on massive distributed computing environments (e.g., cluster environments using 1000+ GPUs).

• 4+ years of experience pioneering the application of generative ML models to highly complex, domain-specific systems such as networking, cybersecurity, or data center infrastructure.

Preferred Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience defining the technical architecture for AI Developer Experiences, agentic frameworks, or autonomous troubleshooting agents deployed in production environments.

• Deep expertise in advanced optimization methodologies, including context engineering, efficient serving architectures, and low-latency inference pipelines.

• Exceptional executive-level communication skills, with the ability to influence company-wide technical direction, secure stakeholder consensus, and mentor senior research talent.

• History of organizing or leading initiatives within the academic community, such as delivering keynotes or chairing sessions at major industry conferences.

• Domain expertise in networking or cybersecurity, with a portfolio of translating this domain knowledge into benchmark-setting expert models.

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. 

Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada:

The starting salary range posted for this position is $263,700.00 to $333,400.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or Canada locations, 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.

U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks.  Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.

U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:

• 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees

• 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco

• Non-exempt employees** receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees

• Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)

• 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to the next

• Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members

• Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer

For non-sales roles, employees are also 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.

The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:

New York City Metro Area:

$296,300.00 - $431,000.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$263,700.00 - $383,500.00

* 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.

** Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.