AI Security Engineer

Cisco; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) plan with company match

Paid parental leave

Short and long-term disability

Basic life insurance

Job summary

Cisco in San Jose seeks a security-focused engineer to design and implement security controls for Generative AI systems, including LLM-powered apps and RAG pipelines.

You will mitigate AI-specific threats, enforce access control, and collaborate with platform and infra teams to secure deployment pipelines. Strong cloud and application security skills are essential for enterprise-scale AI deployments.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in application security, cloud security, or platform security engineering.
• Hands-on experience securing distributed systems or cloud-native applications.
• Experience designing authentication, authorization, and data protection controls.
• Strong programming/scripting skills (Python, Go, or similar).

Responsibilities

• Design and implement security controls for Generative AI systems, including LLM-based applications, RAG pipelines, and agent-driven workflows.
• Identify and mitigate AI-specific threats such as prompt injection, data exfiltration, insecure tool usage, and model abuse.
• Establish guardrails for prompt handling, input/output validation, and safe tool invocation.
• Secure RAG pipelines by enforcing data access controls and retrieval boundary protections.
• Define and enforce model access controls, API protections, and runtime monitoring.
• Partner with AI platform and infrastructure teams to secure deployment pipelines and inference services.
• Conduct threat modeling and security assessments for AI systems, including data pipelines and endpoints.
• Build automated detection and response mechanisms for AI-specific risks.

Skills

Application security

Cloud security

Platform security engineering

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science or cybersecurity

Tools

Kubernetes

APIs

Microservices

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 10/29/2026

Meet the Team

Join Cisco’s Enterprise AI team, the core group enabling Generative AI powered experiences across Cisco. Our mission is to build secure, scalable AI platforms that empower teams to safely develop, deploy, and operationalize AI-powered solutions. We operate at the intersection of applied AI, cloud infrastructure and security —partnering across engineering, security, compliance, and product teams to bring trusted AI to life at enterprise scale.

We are a fast-growing, highly collaborative team of platform engineers, AI engineers, and data scientists who value technical depth, ownership, and pragmatic execution. What makes this team exciting is the opportunity to define how secure Generative AI is built and governed inside a global technology leader.

Your Impact

• Design and implement security controls for Generative AI systems, including LLM-based applications, RAG pipelines, and agent-driven workflows.
• Identify and mitigate AI-specific threats such as prompt injection, data exfiltration, insecure tool usage, and model abuse.
• Establish guardrails for prompt handling, input/output validation, and safe tool invocation to ensure secure agent behavior.
• Secure Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines by enforcing data access controls, source integrity, and retrieval boundary protections.
• Define and enforce model access controls, API protections, and runtime monitoring to prevent misuse and unauthorized access.
• Partner with AI platform and infrastructure teams to integrate security into model deployment pipelines and inference services.
• Conduct threat modeling and security assessments for AI systems, including model lifecycle, data pipelines, and inference endpoints.
• Build automated detection and response mechanisms for AI-specific risks, including anomalous queries and unsafe outputs.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Cybersecurity related field or equivalent certifications along with work experience.
• 3+ years of experience in application security, cloud security, or platform security engineering.
• Hands‑on experience securing distributed systems or cloud-native applications (Kubernetes, APIs, microservices).
• Experience designing and implementing authentication, authorization, and data protection controls.
• Strong programming/scripting skills (Python, Go, or similar) for building security tooling and automation.

Preferred Qualifications

• Cybersecurity background and operational experience
• Certifications from ISC2 (e.g CISSP, CCSP) or ISACA (e.g., SSCP, CC, CISA, CISM)

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 solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere.

We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.

Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada:

The starting salary range posted for this position is $128,600.00 to $184,900.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including incentive compensation*, equity, or benefits.

Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks. Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.

U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:

• 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, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco
• Non‑exempt employees** receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full‑time employees
• Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)
• 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and 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

For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.

Employees On Sales Plans Earn Performance-based Incentive Pay On Top Of Their Base Salary, Which Is Split Between Quota And Non‑quota Components, Subject To The Applicable Cisco Plan. For Quota-based Incentive Pay, Cisco Typically Pays As Follows

• .75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;
• 1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;
• 1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and
• Once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.

For non‑quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.

The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below

New York City Metro Area

$155,000.00 - $256,000.00

Non-Metro New York State & Washington State

$138,100.00 - $227,900.00

• For quota-based sales roles on Cisco’s sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.
• Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non‑exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.