Principal Engineer, AI Security Hybrid
About The Position
Cisco is hiring a Principal Engineer for its AI Security team within Software Security. The team defines and validates security standards for AI embedded in Cisco products, platforms, development workflows, and internal business operations, and scales those standards across the portfolio. The Principal Engineer will serve as a senior technical authority shaping security standards for AI capabilities delivered to customers, partners, and internal users. The role defines threat models, architecture patterns, and requirements for AI-native features; establishes security standards for coding assistants and agent-authored code; leads architecture reviews and develops reusable patterns and release criteria; and addresses adversarial risks and provenance across models, data, plugins, fine-tuning datasets, and external APIs. The position also advances AI red-teaming and evaluation, establishes validation and release checkpoints, and partners on post-deployment standards and incident criteria. The role advises senior engineering leaders across CX, Operations, and Product, and works with product security, AI platform, SecOps, privacy, and legal teams. It translates technical security requirements into business outcomes and drives results through expertise, standards, and influence across a large, matrixed organization. This is a hybrid role.
Requirements
- 12 or more years of experience in software security.
- Deep, hands-on experience architecting and securing AI/ML-integrated systems, including Python, CI/CD automation, evaluation harnesses, agentic workflows, and security tooling.
- Proven ability to secure AI models and applications, including addressing LLM- and agentic-AI-related vulnerabilities such as prompt injection, excessive agency, and data leakage, as well as data privacy concerns.
- Strong background in threat modeling, secure software development lifecycles (SDLC), and architecture validation for large-scale, multi-platform ecosystems.
- Experience quantifying security risk and providing clear, authoritative technical guidance to product managers and engineering leads across multiple teams or business units.
- Ability to operate as a principal-level technical authority without direct reports and drive outcomes through expertise, codified standards, and influence across a large, matrixed organization.
Nice To Haves
- Experience securing autonomous agents, tool-calling, multi-agent orchestration, and MCP-style integrations.
- Experience designing or running AI system red-team or evaluation programs, including adversarial testing and release-gate criteria.
- Deep understanding of AI safety, ethical AI, and global data protection regulations as they apply to cloud-based SaaS and AI-embedded offerings.
- Familiarity with emerging AI governance and risk frameworks, such as NIST AI RMF and ISO/IEC 42001.
- Experience building security standards or playbooks that scale through a distributed network of embedded security practitioners rather than relying only on direct review.
- Experience integrating security checkpoints into high-velocity CI/CD pipelines, including policy-as-code, automated security gates, agentic security workflows, and AI-assisted review and remediation loops.
- Track record of mentoring senior-level engineers and fostering a security-first culture within high-performing technical teams.
Responsibilities
- Define and evolve AI security threat models, architecture patterns, and security requirements for AI-native features, including RAG hardening, tool-call governance, agent identity, bounded autonomy, approval flows, auditability, and human accountability.
- Set security standards for coding assistants and agent-authored code, including provenance, human review, accountability, and automated SDLC/CI/CD security gates.
- Lead secure AI architecture reviews, codify reusable patterns, and define measurable release criteria across Cisco platforms.
- Own abuse and adversarial case coverage, including data poisoning, model extraction, model inversion, membership inference, insecure output handling, and RAG compromise.
- Establish provenance practices for model and data supply chains, including models, datasets, plugins, fine-tuning data, and external APIs.
- Advance AI red-teaming strategy, evaluation harnesses, and release checkpoints, and partner on post-deployment standards and incident criteria for AI-specific failure modes.
- Advise senior engineering leadership across CX, Operations, and Product, and align with product security, AI platform, SecOps, privacy, and legal.
- Translate sophisticated security requirements into business outcomes and drive adoption of security standards across a large, matrixed organization.
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
- Paid holidays and a floating holiday for non-exempt employees
- Birthday day off, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and paid personal wellness days
- Paid vacation or flexible vacation time off, depending on employee classification
- Paid 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
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
Education Level
No Education Listed
