Machine Learning Engineer

Overview

Join us at Cisco to shape the future of enterprise AI. We are building an AI Platform Team focused on creating the next-generation foundation that powers intelligent, secure, and scalable AI solutions across Cisco’s ecosystem. This team is at the forefront of bridging research innovation with real-world application, addressing some of the most fundamental challenges in AI from advancing large language model capabilities and building agentic frameworks to optimizing data pipelines and ensuring trustworthy AI deployment at scale.

As part of this pioneering effort, you’ll collaborate with leading AI researchers, data scientists, and engineers to design, develop, and operationalize AI systems that drive measurable business impact for millions of users worldwide. If you’re passionate about solving hard technical problems and shaping how AI transforms enterprise security and networking, this is where you’ll make it happen.

Your Impact

You are an accomplished and visionary AI Researcher with a track record of leading teams and architecting machine learning solutions that have made a significant impact. You are deeply passionate about machine learning with a proven track record of optimally developing and implementing models that address real-world problems.

What You Will Do

Model Training & Evaluation: Full cycle of training, fine-tuning, and validating LLMs for virtual assistants, chatbots, and recommendation systems.

Algorithm Development: Enhance efficiency and accuracy in natural language understanding and generation.

LLMs in Cybersecurity: Apply models for threat analysis, detection, and automated security responses.

Deployment Strategy: Partner with engineering teams to ensure scalable, reliable ML model deployment.

Documentation & Standards: Define best practices and maintain clear records of models, pipelines, and metrics.

Innovation: Explore emerging technologies, tools, and methods in language model development.

Mentorship & Collaboration: Guide team members and work cross-functionally for cohesive project delivery.

Basic Qualifications

Education & Experience: BA/BS or MS with 7+ years in machine learning, proven project portfolio.

ML Systems & Algorithms: Strong background in ML engineering, deep learning, and statistical modeling; experience building scalable ML solutions.

LLM Expertise: In-depth knowledge of Transformer-based architectures (e.g., GPT) and training/fine-tuning large-scale models; exposure to Agentic frameworks.

NLP Skills: Data preprocessing (tokenization, stemming, lemmatization), handling ambiguity and context, and transfer learning for domain/language adaptation.

Applications: Applied LLMs in chatbots, content generation, semantic search, and related use cases.

Data & Evaluation: Skilled in data annotation strategies and model evaluation with appropriate metrics.

Scalability & Deployment: Experience deploying LLMs to production with efficiency, reliability, and scalability.

Preferred Qualifications

Degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Statistics, Computational Linguistics or a related field.

Proficiency in programming languages such as Python or R, and experience with machine learning libraries (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch)

Excellent problem-solving and communication skills, with the ability to explain sophisticated concepts to non-technical partners

Proven experience to work collaboratively in multi-functional teams

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.