Senior AI Software Engineer - Scalable Cyber Defense

Cisco Systems, Inc; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 168,000 - 245,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental and vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid parental leave

Stock grants/RSUs

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. is seeking engineers to design and build AI-driven security platforms that correlate trillions of events and signals, delivering explainable findings for analysts. You will prototype AI features with SMEs, develop an AI DevOps pipeline, and collaborate across product and platform teams to scale trusted automation.

The role emphasizes architecture, data engineering, and rapid iteration in a security-focused environment, with opportunity to impact enterprise defenses globally.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 7+ years of related experience or Master's with 4+ years of related experience.
• Distributed systems design and implementation with storage systems focus.
• Fluent Python or Go development for backend services and automation.
• DevOps and SecOps practices including CI/CD, version control, and testing.
• Agentic development of coding-task agents and collaborations with product/engineers.

Responsibilities

• Design and build systems that fuse security data, signals, context, and models to detect threats.
• Prototype and test AI features with security SMEs and researchers to validate value.
• Develop an AI DevOps pipeline for rapid experimentation with data and memory.
• Architect and build a distributed platform to correlate events and produce explainable findings.
• Collaborate with product and platform teams to design AI-enhanced threat workflows.
• Contribute to core architecture for AI-native security operations at scale.

Skills

Distributed systems design

Data platform/fabric

Python/Go development

DevOps/SecOps

Agentic development

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree + 7+ years

Master's degree + 4+ years

Tools

GitHub/GitLab

Jira

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 09/24/2026

Meet the Team

We are an agile team with a startup feel and a strong bias for action. We move fast, embrace failure as part of the process, and stay focused on solving real-world problems for defenders on the front lines. Our team blends deep expertise in AI, cybersecurity, platform and systems engineering. We are driven by a shared belief that the only way to outpace hackers is through AI advancements that free up humans to tackle real threats and more challenging problems.

This is a place for builders who thrive in ambiguity, challenge the status quo, and care deeply about making a meaningful impact. If you’re energized by tough problems, excited to shape the future of cyber defense, and eager to work alongside passionate experts, you’ll feel right at home.

Your Impact

• Design and build systems that combine security-relevant data, detection signals, context, and foundation models to spot and predict threats, those in action and those that are about to happen.

• Prototype and test new AI features - from decoding events and system environments to predicting anomalies and threats - working closely with security SMEs and security researchers to validate real-world utility.

• Develop an AIDevOps pipeline to enable rapid experimentation with data. Knowledge bases, models, and context memory, using clear, measurable success criteria to evaluate iterations.

• Architect and build the distributed platform that can correlate trillions of events & signals, and can synthesize them into explainable findings and alerts, consumed by our triage resolution agents – you will be building a key capability of the Agentic SOC.

• Collaborate with product and platform teams to co-design AI-enhanced threat detection and prediction workflows that are intuitive, scalable, and immediately useful to analysts.

• Contribute to the core architecture powering AI-native security operations, helping to shape how Splunk and Cisco scale trusted automation across the enterprise.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree with 7+ years of related experience or Master's with 4+ years of related experience.

• Experience with storage systems and storage access layers

• Experience working with data platforms and/or data lakes and warehouses or streaming platforms.

• Experience building scalable backend services, APIs, and automation workflows in Python or Go.

• Experience designing agent systems that will perform coding tasks for you.

Preferred Qualifications

• Security Data Engineering – Experience building and maintaining pipelines for ingesting, parsing, and normalizing large-scale security telemetry.

• Security Operations Experience – Understanding of security operations concepts, including attack surface management, threat analytics, detection, triage, investigation, and response. Alternatively, former Tier 3 SOC analyst or equivalent, with experience automating SecOps workflows and building scalable, resilient detection infrastructure.

• RAG/GraphRAG Search Implementation – Hands-on experience developing retrieval-augmented generation pipelines and working with vector databases (e.g., FAISS, Pinecone, Weaviate).

• Model Integration – Skilled in crafting, testing, and optimizing training workloads for large language or special-purpose models such as GNNs, GCNs, GATs. Ideally, you have contributed to or shipped an AI-powered feature or product, and understand the nuances of integrating models into real-world workflows - including usability, performance, and trust considerations.

• AI Evaluation & Experimentation – Capable of designing experiments to evaluate model output for accuracy, usability, performance, and cost

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 $167,700.00 to $245,200.00 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:

$167,700.00 - $282,000.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$149,100.00 - $250,900.00

* 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.