Principal AI Researcher, AISWP (Hybrid)

Cisco
Seattle, California
Workplace: HybridFull timeUSD 263,700 - 383,500 annuallyFunction: Research & Scientific (R&D)Education: bachelorsSkills: ["Executive communication","Strategic advisory","Publishing","Technical leadership","Mentoring"]

Define the technical vision and multi-year research strategy for Cisco’s proprietary, purpose-built large language models in networking, security, and observability. Lead massive-scale pre-training, continued pre-training, and reinforcement learning efforts, and architect agentic frameworks for autonomous operations and intelligent routing. Translate research breakthroughs into scalable, enterprise-grade systems, advise executive leadership, and publish high-impact work to advance the broader AI research community.

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FursaFursa
Cisco
Cisco
4 days ago

Principal AI Researcher, AISWP (Hybrid)

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Job Summary

Define the technical vision and multi-year research strategy for Cisco’s proprietary, purpose-built large language models in networking, security, and observability. Lead massive-scale pre-training, continued pre-training, and reinforcement learning efforts, and architect agentic frameworks for autonomous operations and intelligent routing. Translate research breakthroughs into scalable, enterprise-grade systems, advise executive leadership, and publish high-impact work to advance the broader AI research community.
Location: Seattle, California
Workplace: Hybrid
Employment Type: Full time
Job Function: Research & Scientific (R&D)

Key Responsibilities

  • •Define the overarching strategic research roadmap for purpose-built large language models securing and optimizing Cisco’s networking, security, data center, and observability infrastructure.
  • •Lead massive-scale pre-training, continued pre-training, and advanced reinforcement learning initiatives to establish foundational models.
  • •Architect agentic frameworks and autonomous operations, advancing reasoning and intelligent routing for IT environments.
  • •Serve as a principal technical advisor to executive leadership, translating research breakthroughs into scalable, enterprise-grade product ecosystems.
  • •Publish high-impact research and spearhead workshop proposals at top-tier AI venues to shape the broader scientific discourse.

Pay and Benefits

Salary: USD 263,700 - 383,500 annually
Equity and Bonus:Equity
Perks:Health InsuranceDentalVision401kPaid ParentalDisability CoverageLife InsurancePaid HolidaysPaid Leave

Key Requirements

  • •Bachelor’s degree in STEM with 15+ years of experience, a Master’s degree with 12+ years of experience, or a PhD with 8+ years of highly relevant research experience.
  • •Architect and lead full-cycle pre-training, continued pre-training, or reinforcement learning pipelines for massive-scale foundation models, including dataset curation, distributed training, and alignment execution.
  • •Demonstrate 6+ publications in top-tier AI venues (ACL, EMNLP, ICLR, ICML, NAACL, NeurIPS) with significant citations or influential contributions.
  • •5+ years engineering and scaling training pipelines using PyTorch or similar frameworks on massive distributed computing environments (e.g., 1000+ GPUs).
  • •4+ years applying generative ML models to complex, domain-specific systems such as networking, cybersecurity, or data center infrastructure.
Experience:Large language modelsFoundation modelsAgentic workflowsReinforcement learningDistributed trainingNetworkingCybersecurityObservability
Education:Bachelor's in STEM
Skills:Executive communicationStrategic advisoryPublishingTechnical leadershipMentoring
Tech Stack:PyTorchLarge language modelsReinforcement learning

Company Brief

Cisco
Global technology company that designs, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, telecommunications equipment, and high-technology services and products for enterprises, service providers, and governments worldwide.
Industry: Networking Equipment
Company Size: Enterprise (1,001+ employees)
Revenue: USD 1B+
Growth: Public Company
Valuation: Public Company (Market Cap in USD)
Funding: IPO / Publicly Listed
Headquarters: San Jose, United States
Founded: 1984
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Glassdoor: 4.0
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