Principal Machine Learning Engineer

Cisco Systems, Inc; Milpitas (CA); On-site; USD 296,000 - 375,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to serve as a technical authority for the AI Platform Engineering team.

You will define architectural vision, lead system design for the AI Canvas, and collaborate with product management to deliver scalable AI systems. The role requires 15+ years in software engineering, deep experience with distributed cloud platforms, and leadership across cross-functional teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS / Engineering with 15+ years of software engineering experience.
• 8+ years designing distributed cloud platforms and microservices.
• 4+ years in technical leadership roles driving architecture.
• Experience with AI SDLC and code generation tools.
• Experience building production AI applications and LLM orchestration.
• Backend or full-stack development using Python, Go, or TypeScript.

Responsibilities

• Define architectural vision and lead system design for AI Canvas.
• Drive technical standards and evaluate emerging technologies.
• Mentor team members and drive decisions across teams.
• Build shared infrastructure to boost productivity across engineering teams.
• Lead design reviews with engineers, QA, product, and security.
• Operate Kubernetes deployments with SRE collaboration.
• Debug across service boundaries using logs, traces, and metrics.

Skills

AI platform design

Distributed systems

Kubernetes

Go/Python/TypeScript

Backend/Full-stack

Education

Bachelor's/Master/PhD in CS/Engineering

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

LangGraph

APIs/Code Gen

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 11/25/2026

About the Team

The AI Software & Platform Team designs and builds enterprise AI platform software to enhance security resilience, threat defense, and operational automation across Cisco’s portfolio. The team consists of front-end, backend, and machine learning engineers developing core platform infrastructure, agentic frameworks, and AI-enabled product interfaces.

The AI Software & Platform Team designs and operates the core platform infrastructure connecting

Cisco’s enterprise product dashboards with intelligent, agentic AI capabilities. The team consists of front-end, backend, machine learning engineers and applied AI researchers developing core platform infrastructure, agentic frameworks, and AI-enabled product interfaces.

Your Impact

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will serve as a lead technical architect and technical authority for the AI Platform Engineering team. In this role, you will define the architectural vision, lead system design, and direct technical execution for the Agentic Ops Solution (AI Canvas) and associated AI platform capabilities. You will drive technical standards, evaluate emerging technologies, and collaborate with product management and engineering teams to deliver scalable AI systems.

Key Responsibilities

• An AI-first mindset paired with the ability to exercise sound technical judgment and decompose vague, complex problems into well-scoped, actionable deliverables.
• Experience building shared infrastructure, abstractions, and "paved roads" that enhance productivity across engineering teams.
• Proficiency in spec-driven and schema-driven development, including the use of code generation, strongly typed API contracts, and implementation traceability.
• Understanding of the unique architecture and operational constraints associated with both SaaS and on-premise deployment models.
• Ability to mentor immediate team members while effectively driving technical decision-making across cross-functional and cross-organizational boundaries.
• Experience building LLM / agentic systems: orchestrators, ReAct-style and deep agents, tool calling, MCP servers, streaming and asynchronous task results, and disambiguation in conversation.
• Experience running services on Kubernetes, including deployment configuration, secret management, and health checks, and working closely with SRE.
• Strong debugging skills across service boundaries using logs, traces, and metrics.
• Clear technical writing and the ability to lead design reviews with engineers, QA, product, and security.

Minimum qualifications

• Education & Experience: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related technical field with 15+ years of software engineering experience; OR Master’s degree with 12+ years; OR PhD with 8+ years
• Platform & Cloud Systems Experience: Minimum of 8 years of experience designing and deploying distributed cloud software platforms, microservices, or enterprise-scale automation systems.
• Technical Leadership Track Record: Minimum of 4 years serving in a technical leadership capacity (e.g., Principal Engineer, Lead Architect, or Technical Lead) driving architectural decisions across multi-disciplinary engineering teams.
• AI Software Development Lifecycle (AI-SDLC): Experience leveraging code gen tools for software development leading to significant productivity improvements.
• AI Applications: Experience building and deploying production applications utilizing Generative AI, LLM orchestration frameworks, or AI assistants/copilots.
• Core Engineering Proficiency: Experience developing backend or full-stack software using modern languages (e.g., Python, Go, or TypeScript/Node.js) and cloud-native technologies (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker, cloud hyperscaler platforms).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience architecting multi-agent systems, agentic workflow runtimes, or graph-based execution engines (e.g., LangGraph, MCP).
• Experience with harness engineering, and loop engineering.
• Experience developing enterprise developer platforms, SDKs, APIs, and modern front-end user interfaces (e.g., React, TypeScript).
• Experience with model serving infrastructure, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) architectures, and LLM evaluation/benchmarking frameworks.
• Authored technical patents, peer-reviewed publications, or significant open-source contributions in distributed systems, software platforms, or applied AI.

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 $296,300.00 to $374,800.00 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 ofunused sick timecarried forwardfrom one calendar yearto 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:

$296,300.00 - $431,000.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$263,700.00 - $383,500.00

* 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.