Director, AI Engineering
About The Position
The Director, AI Engineering is an engineering leader in Cisco Customer Experience (CX), responsible for defining and executing the technical strategy for AI solutions that transform customer adoption and renewals. The role leads high-performing engineering teams from concept through production and operationalizes autonomous agents, context engineering, and multi-agent orchestration platforms to deliver production-grade AI systems at scale. The position is part of the CX AI Incubation and Agent team, which develops solutions across delivery intelligence, network automation, and edge computing for Cisco CX and global customers. The team partners across engineering, product, and design to build scalable, responsible platforms using Generative and Agentic AI.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related field with 15 or more years of software engineering experience, or a Master’s degree with 12 or more years of experience.
- At least 5 years of engineering management experience leading software and ML engineering teams.
- Programming experience in Python, Java, C++, or modern object-oriented languages.
- Experience building and scaling data-driven AI/ML systems, AI-native applications, and AI agents, including agent harnesses and production-grade agentic architectures.
- Experience building and deploying systems utilizing LLMs, NLP, Generative AI, or Agentic AI architectures.
Nice To Haves
- Advanced degree (Master’s or PhD) in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, or Machine Learning.
- Experience architecting multi-agent orchestration pipelines and context engineering systems.
- Experience applying AI solutions to enterprise customer success, adoption, or renewal workflows.
- Proven track record of technical leadership and cross-functional execution in fast-paced environments.
- Strong communication skills and ability to engage technical teams and executive business leaders.
Responsibilities
- Spearhead end-to-end development of agentic AI solutions across the CX customer adoption and renewals portfolio.
- Lead the architecture and development of a core platform for hosting Agentic AI solutions.
- Manage and mentor cross-functional teams of software, ML, and data engineers and technical leaders through full-lifecycle delivery.
- Evaluate, select, and standardize tools, frameworks, and foundation model infrastructure across the portfolio.
- Partner with product management and business stakeholders to translate strategic requirements into production AI applications.
- Establish best practices for responsible AI, context engineering, and observable agent deployment.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance, subject to plan eligibility rules.
- 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution.
- Paid parental leave.
- Short- and long-term disability coverage.
- Basic life insurance.
- Potential eligibility for Cisco restricted stock unit grants, which vest with continued employment.
- Paid holidays and, for non-exempt employees, a floating holiday.
- Birthday paid day off, year-end holiday shutdown, and paid personal wellness days.
- Paid vacation or flexible vacation time off, depending on employee classification.
- Paid sick time, with unused sick time carryover up to the stated limit.
- Additional paid time away may be requested for critical or emergency family issues.
- Optional paid volunteer days.
- Annual bonus eligibility for non-sales roles, subject to Cisco policies.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
