Director of Physical AI & Autonomous Robotics

Cisco Systems, Inc.; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 230,000 - 291,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. seeks an exceptionally technical Director of Physical AI and Common Services to lead strategy, architecture, and software for quadrupedal and bipedal robots across global facilities. You will bridge on‑chassis edge AI compute with Cisco's enterprise AI fabric and ensure safe, scalable deployment.

You will own hardware customization, on‑chassis software, pilots, and safety governance while partnering with procurement, security, and IP teams to advance JDAs with robotics OEMs.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in robotics, mechatronics, or related field or equivalent practical work experience.
• 10+ years in robotics, mechatronics, embedded systems, or autonomous hardware.
• Direct technical leadership across multidisciplinary teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead evaluation, co-development, and execution across quadrupedal and bipedal robots.
• Define JDAs with robotics OEMs for on‑chassis hosting of Cisco intelligence containers and LLMs.
• Oversee hardware retrofits, sensor integration, and safety governance.
• Design and deploy autonomous robots for executive facilities.
• Develop on‑chassis edge ML pipelines for server fault detection.

Skills

Technical leadership

Robotics experience

C++/Python

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Master's or PhD

Tools

ROS/ROS 2

Job description

Cisco Systems, Inc. seeks an exceptionally technical Director of Physical AI and Common Services to lead strategy, architecture, and software for quadrupedal and bipedal robots across global facilities. You will bridge on‑chassis edge AI compute with Cisco's enterprise AI fabric and ensure safe, scalable deployment.

You will own hardware customization, on‑chassis software, pilots, and safety governance while partnering with procurement, security, and IP teams to advance JDAs with robotics OEMs.