The application window is expected to close on: 11/26/2026This is a hybrid role, requiring 3 days per week in office in San Jose, CA
Meet the Team Cisco’s Customer Experience (CX) Engineering organization is a global team of engineers, architects, product leaders, and AI/ML experts building next-generation AI-powered experiences and capabilities through Cisco IQ, our industry-leading platform-centric approach. Our work plays a critical role in transforming how Cisco delivers customer and partner experiences by applying Generative AI, AI/ML, intelligent agents, automation, and data-driven insights at enterprise scale. We are a highly collaborative, customer-focused team that combines the agility and innovation mindset of an incubation organization with the scale, engineering rigor, and reach of Cisco. Team members work across disciplines to solve complex technical challenges and turn emerging AI technologies into secure, scalable, production-ready solutions. This is an exciting opportunity to help shape the future of AI-powered Customer Experience at Cisco and build capabilities that can create meaningful impact for customers, partners, and internal teams worldwide.
Your Impact In this role, you will architect, build, and scale enterprise-grade AI/ML and Generative AI solutions - including predictive models, RAG architectures, and autonomous agentic workflows - that power Cisco IQ and our next-generation Customer Experience platform. Operating across the full machine learning lifecycle, you will own robust data pipelines, low-latency model serving, and LLMOps infrastructure while establishing rigorous automated evaluation and observability frameworks to ensure high-accuracy, reliable performance at scale. You will partner with product managers, data scientists, and software engineering teams to translate complex business needs into secure, production-ready capabilities, driving technical excellence, responsible AI governance, and measurable customer outcomes.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree with 7+ years related experience, or Masters degree with 4+ years related experience.
- Programming experience using Python and/or Java, including designing, developing, testing, and deploying production-grade software applications, APIs, and/or distributed services.
- AI/ML experience developing, training, evaluating, and deploying machine learning models using frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn, XGBoost, or equivalent technologies.
- Generative AI/LLM development experience, including building applications using LLMs, RAG, embeddings/vector databases, prompt engineering, AI agents, and/or LLM evaluation and observability tools such as LangChain/LangGraph, LangSmith, OpenAI or Anthropic/Claude APIs, or equivalent technologies.
- Experience building data pipelines and data-intensive applications using technologies such as SQL, Spark, Kafka, ETL/ELT frameworks, cloud data platforms, or equivalent data engineering technologies.
Preferred Qualifications
- Hands-on experience designing and building Generative AI and agentic AI applications, including RAG, multi-agent workflows, tool/function calling, prompt engineering, embeddings, vector databases, and context management using frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, or equivalent technologies.
- Experience with LLMOps/MLOps and AI evaluation/observability, including tools such as LangSmith, MLflow, model monitoring, automated evaluation frameworks, and techniques for measuring model quality, accuracy, latency, reliability, and cost.
- Experience building and deploying cloud-native AI/ML applications and data platforms using AWS, or Google Cloud, along with technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, REST APIs, microservices, CI/CD, and modern data processing frameworks.
- Proficiency with modern AI-assisted software engineering tools such as GitHub Copilot, Claude/Claude Code, Cursor, or similar tools to accelerate development, testing, debugging, code reviews, and engineering productivity.
- Demonstrated ability to independently own complex technical problems, collaborate across engineering, product, architecture, and data science teams, communicate technical concepts effectively, and mentor other engineers while delivering high-quality production solutions.
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 $203,000.00 to $258,600.00 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:
$203,000.00 - $297,400.00
Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:
$181,000.00 - $264,600.00
- 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.