AI Researcher

Cisco•San Jose, CA

1d•$216,300 - $280,800

About The Position

Join Cisco's AI Platform Team to help build next-generation infrastructure for intelligent, secure, and scalable enterprise AI. The team works on Small Language Models, agentic frameworks, and trustworthy AI deployment across Cisco's ecosystem. As an Applied AI Researcher, you will collaborate with AI researchers, data scientists, and engineers to translate research into production solutions for internal business units and external customers. You will take methods from research papers and prototypes into production models on NeuralFabric, including domain models, reinforcement learning, and agent simulation. You will contribute to training and fine-tuning models for network, security, observability, and operations use cases; develop reusable training and evaluation practices; and help make model quality measurable and repeatable. You will also monitor developments in language models, multimodal models, and agents and apply relevant research to internal and customer use cases.

Requirements

PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field.
At least 5 years of experience in applied AI/ML research or engineering.
Experience independently designing, training, and fine-tuning language models for production or applied research use.
Experience using Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, or Hugging Face Transformers.
Experience with advanced post-training methods such as LoRA, QLoRA, PEFT, instruction tuning, supervised fine-tuning, or reinforcement learning from human or AI feedback.
Track record of leading applied AI projects from research through production deployment, with documented outcomes across more than one domain or problem.

Nice To Haves

Publications in leading AI conferences such as ACL, EMNLP, ICLR, ICML, NAACL, or NeurIPS.
Experience with Small Language Models, efficient architectures, model compression, reinforcement learning, gym-style training environments, or agent evaluation harnesses.
Familiarity with networking, cybersecurity, observability, or IT operations domains.
Experience with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), advanced evaluation methodologies, and model promotion or lineage gates.
Ability to work closely with AI researchers and engineers, explain technical work, and collaborate with business-unit or customer partners when a use case requires it.

Responsibilities

Collaborate with AI researchers to design, train, and fine-tune Small Language Models for network, security, observability, and operations problems using current post-training techniques.
Advance reinforcement learning, Auto Gym, and agent-simulation methods with the research team and turn them into reusable training and evaluation recipes on the platform.
Define evaluation methods and model promotion gates with researchers and engineers so model quality is measurable and repeatable.
Stay current with LLMs, SLMs, multimodal models, and agents, and apply relevant research to internal and customer use cases through technical deep-dives.
Translate AI research into production models on NeuralFabric and production solutions for internal business units and external customers.

Benefits

Medical, dental, and vision insurance.
401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution.
Paid parental leave.
Short- and long-term disability coverage.
Basic life insurance.
Cisco restricted stock unit grants may be available, subject to eligibility and continued employment requirements.
Paid holidays and a floating holiday for non-exempt employees.
Paid birthday day off, year-end holiday shutdown, and personal wellness days.
Paid vacation time for non-exempt employees; exempt employees participate in a flexible vacation time-off program.
Sick time off, including carryover of eligible unused sick time.
Additional paid time away may be requested for critical or emergency family issues.
Optional paid volunteer days.
Annual bonuses may be available for non-sales roles, subject to Cisco policies.