AI Researcher

Cisco•San Jose, CA

About The Position

Join Cisco's AI Platform Team to shape the future of enterprise AI. We're building next-generation infrastructure that powers intelligent, secure, and scalable AI solutions across Cisco's ecosystem—from advancing Small Language Model capabilities and building Agentic frameworks to ensuring trustworthy AI deployment at scale. You'll join as a core member of our team, working with AI researchers, data scientists, and engineers to transform research into real business impact. In this role, you'll translate cutting-edge AI research into production solutions for internal business units and external customers. If you're passionate about solving hard technical problems and shaping how AI transforms the enterprise, this is where you'll make it happen.

Requirements

PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field with 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.
Previous use of 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 top 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 other AI researchers and engineers, explain technical work and collaborate with business-unit or customer partners when a use case requires it.

Responsibilities

Work with other AI researchers to take methods from paper and prototype into production models on NeuralFabric—domain models, RL, and agent simulation that Cisco and customers can actually use.
Partner 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 those methods into reusable training and evaluation recipes on the platform.
Define evaluation methods and promotion gates with researchers and engineers so model quality is measurable and repeatable.
Stay current with LLMs, SLMs, multi-modal models, and agents, and apply that research to internal and customer use cases through technical deep-dives—not as a dedicated forward-deployment owner.

Benefits

medical, dental and vision insurance
a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution
paid parental leave
short and long-term disability coverage
basic life insurance
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
4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco
16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees (non-exempt employees)
flexible vacation time off program (exempt employees)
80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter
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
annual bonuses (for non-sales roles)
performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary (for sales roles)