AI Infrastructure Technical Systems Engineer

Cisco Systems, Inc; North Carolina; On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. is seeking an AI Infrastructure Technical System Engineer to serve as the principal systems architect for enterprise AI platforms.

You will define architectural direction, drive complex infrastructure initiatives, and mentor engineers across a global team supporting foundational models, distributed AI training, and ML platforms. You will lead design and optimization of bare-metal GPU clusters, multi-tenant compute planes, and AI workload orchestration while ensuring

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, IT, or related discipline with 5 plus of progressive experience in enterprise systems engineering, HPC, AI infrastructure, or SRE.
• Proficiency in Python, Go, or Bash, with extensive experience building declarative automation (Ansible, Terraform, CI/CD, GitOps).
• Advanced expertise designing and administering production Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift, and HPC workload managers (Slurm, Kueue, Volcano, Ray).
• Strong hands-on understanding of AI backend network fabrics, RDMA technologies (RoCEv2), and high-speed multi-hundred-gigabit network topologies.

Responsibilities

• Architecture, Strategy & Capacity Engineering of large-scale bare-metal GPU clusters (NVIDIA/AMD).
• Architect multi-tenant compute and control planes across bare-metal Kubernetes, OpenShift, and HPC cluster managers.
• Collaborate with network engineers to design and optimize high-throughput, low-latency fabrics.
• Champion Site Reliability Engineering to eliminate operational toil and uphold SLOs.
• Oversee IaC and GitOps deployment pipelines using Ansible, Terraform, Python, Go, and CI/CD tooling.
• Manage firmware baselines, BIOS/BMC configuration, kernel driver updates, and platform upgrades.

Skills

Python

Go

Bash

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related

Tools

Ansible

Terraform

CI/CD tooling

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 11/22/2026

Meet the Team

The Cisco IT AI Infrastructure team delivers high-performance compute (HPC) and accelerated AI infrastructure as a service across Cisco's global enterprise footprint. We provide foundational supercomputing platforms that empower engineering, research, security, and product teams. Our organization architects, builds, and operates the enterprise-grade supercomputing infrastructure that powers Cisco’s foundational models, distributed AI training, inference engines, and machine learning platforms.

Your Impact

As an AI Infrastructure Technical System Engineer and Technical Leader, you will serve as the principal systems architect and technical authority for our enterprise AI platforms. You will establish architectural direction, spearhead complex infrastructure initiatives, mentor engineering talent, and bridge accelerated hardware capabilities with high-performance software execution. You will collaborate with a global multi-disciplinary team, interfacing regularly with internal AI Researchers, Cisco Hardware & Network Architecture Teams, and Industry Ecosystem Partners (NVIDIA, AMD, Red Hat) to engineer and operate a cutting-edge, large-scale AI technology stack.

Key Responsibilities

• Architecture, Strategy & Capacity EngineeringLead the architectural design, hardware qualification, capacity planning, and maintenance of large-scale bare-metal GPU clusters (NVIDIA/AMD).
• Architect resilient, multi-tenant compute and control planes across bare-metal Kubernetes, enterprise container platforms (Red Hat OpenShift), and HPC cluster managers (NVIDIA BCM).
• Collaborate with network engineering to design, benchmark, and optimize high-throughput, low-latency backend fabrics (RDMA, RoCEv2, 400G/800G).
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC), GitOps & SRE AutomationChampion Site Reliability Engineering to eliminate operational toil, drive autonomous self-healing, and uphold stringent Service Level Objectives (SLOs).
• Architect IaC and GitOps deployment pipelines using Ansible, Terraform, Python, Go, and modern CI/CD tooling.
• Oversee automated workflows for firmware baselines, BIOS/BMC configuration, kernel driver updates, platform upgrades, and certificate rotations.
• AI Workload Orchestration & Systems PerformanceOptimize distributed workload scheduling, fair-share queueing, and GPU quota governance across frameworks (Slurm, Kueue, Volcano, Ray).
• Profile low-level systems performance, diagnosing device interconnect bottlenecks, bandwidth utilization, memory hierarchies, and compute efficiency.
• Establish automated Day-2 diagnostics and recovery procedures for GPU degradation, driver anomalies, and hardware faults.
• Observability, Governance & Technical LeadershipArchitect end-to-end observability standards using OpenTelemetry (OTel), Prometheus, and Splunk to deliver role-specific visualization dashboards and anomaly detectors.
• Serve as the senior escalation authority for high-impact incidents, leading root-cause analyses (RCAs) and aligning operations with ITIL frameworks.
• Author architecture blueprints and standard operating procedures (SOPs); mentor and coach mid-level and senior engineers to foster a culture of innovation.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, IT, or related discipline with 5 plus of progressive experience in enterprise systems engineering, HPC, AI infrastructure, or SRE.
• Proficiency in Python, Go, or Bash, with extensive experience building declarative automation (Ansible, Terraform, CI/CD, GitOps).
• Advanced expertise designing and administering production Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift, and HPC workload managers (Slurm, Kueue, Volcano, Ray).
• Strong hands‑on understanding of AI backend network fabrics, RDMA technologies (RoCEv2), and high‑speed multi‑hundred‑gigabit network topologies.
• In‑depth knowledge of enterprise Linux (RHEL/Ubuntu), kernel module lifecycle, memory subsystems, GPU device drivers, and out‑of‑band management (Redfish, IPMI).

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline (or an additional 2+ years of equivalent specialized engineering experience).
• 3+ years of experience managing enterprise server platforms at scale (e.g., environments with 500+ nodes), including automated hardware provisioning and centralized infrastructure management solutions.
• 2+ years of hands‑on experience deploying, troubleshooting, and optimizing heterogeneous GPU software stacks (e.g., NVIDIA CUDA, AMD ROCm) and executing GPU validation suites in production environments.
• 3+ years of experience designing and implementing enterprise secrets management architectures (e.g., HashiCorp Vault) and integrating identity federation protocols (OIDC, SAML, SSO) across multiple production applications.
• Possession of at least one active, current industry‑recognized advanced certification (e.g., CKA/CKS, RHCA/RHCE, or advanced networking credentials).
• Demonstrable record of active contributions (e.g., verifiable authored commits, merged pull requests, or published technical documentation) to open‑source infrastructure projects, Kubernetes SIGs, HPC scheduling communities, or telemetry frameworks.

Why Cisco?

At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint. Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutio