{"id":1058268,"url":"https://alion.io/job/cisco-systems-ai-operations-engineer-3","title":"AI Operations Engineer","company":{"id":90,"name":"Cisco Systems","domain":"cisco.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/cisco-systems","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":85,"open_postings":264,"ghost_share":0.045,"stale_share":0.451,"repost_share":0.087,"time_to_fill_p50_days":26,"computed_at":"2026-11-08T05:47:12Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Research Triangle Park, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":203000,"max":297400,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":297400},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":7,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"A2A","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Anthropic SDK","optional":false},{"name":"AutoGen","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Context Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"CrewAI","optional":false},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":false},{"name":"GraphQL","optional":false},{"name":"LangChain","optional":false},{"name":"LangGraph","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Guardrails","optional":false},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":false},{"name":"OpenAI SDK","optional":false},{"name":"Prompt Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false},{"name":"Rest API","optional":false},{"name":"AgentOps","optional":true},{"name":"AWS","optional":true},{"name":"Azure","optional":true},{"name":"FinOps","optional":true},{"name":"GCP","optional":true},{"name":"Human-in-the-Loop","optional":true},{"name":"Hybrid Search","optional":true},{"name":"Langfuse","optional":true},{"name":"LangSmith","optional":true},{"name":"LLM Evaluation","optional":true},{"name":"LLMOps","optional":true},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":true},{"name":"Multi-Agent Systems","optional":true},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":true},{"name":"Reranking","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-19T05:04:14Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-24","last_verified_at":"2026-11-08T11:47:30Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":50,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":1,"flags":[],"days_open":50},"description":"2021485 - AI Operations Engineer (Hybrid)\nThis position is listed as hybrid - eligible candidates should expect to be present in the Raleigh-Cisco office on a semi-regular basis.\nJob posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.\nMeet the Team\nJoin Cisco’s Commerce Operations Engineering Center (COEC) as an AI Engineer, where you will be part of a dynamic team driving innovation through AI-powered automation. Collaborate with multi-functional AI, engineering, and operations teams to transform sophisticated operational challenges into reliable, scalable AI solutions that advance Cisco’s AI-first future.\nYour Impact\nAs an AI Engineer in COEC, you will design, build, and operate production-ready AI agents that power Cisco’s Commerce Operations. You will translate complex operational needs into automated workflows by orchestrating LLM reasoning, tool/function calling, retrieval, enterprise integrations, and agent-to-agent communication. You will be responsible for the full lifecycle of AI agent delivery-from solution design, guardrails, and system integration to evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement. Your work will help eliminate manual tasks, improve speed and accuracy, and drive operational excellence.\nWhat You’ll Do\nDesign and build AI agents that automate manual and repetitive Commerce Operations tasks.\nImplement agent orchestration using frameworks such as LangGraph, LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI, or equivalent.\nBuild agent-to-agent integrations using emerging standards such as A2A and MCP to enable reliable coordination and delegation.\nDesign secure API integrations with commerce platforms and enterprise data sources using REST, GraphQL, webhooks, event-driven services, authentication, rate limiting, and error handling.\nBuild and optimize retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines using documents, structured data, and knowledge repositories.\nImplement guardrails, human approval gates, LLM routing, and failover mechanisms to ensure reliability, safety, and cost control.\nApply prompt and context engineering to ensure AI agents deliver accurate, safe, and consistent outcomes.\nBuild evaluation and observability capabilities, including offline test sets, online monitoring, tracing, audit logging, and quality regression detection.\nOwn deployment and production operations, including CI/CD, progressive rollout, rollback, monitoring, model/version control, and cost tracking.\nSupervise AI solution performance and report business impact through critical metrics such as efficiency gains, cycle-time reduction, incident reduction, and operational accuracy.\nContinuously improve AI workflows, tools, and methodologies to increase reliability, scalability, and business value.\nPartner with Commerce Operations, application development, infrastructure, and business teams to integrate AI solutions into existing systems and workflows.\nMinimum Qualifications\n7+ years of experience in software engineering or a related field within an enterprise environment.\nShown experience building and deploying LLM-powered or agentic AI applications in production.\nStrong Python skills and tactical experience with LLM/agent frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, OpenAI SDK, Anthropic SDK, or equivalents.\nPractical expertise in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), prompt engineering, tool/function calling, agent orchestration, and multi-agent communication or workflow orchestration.\nExperience with API and system integrations, including REST, GraphQL, event-driven services, authentication, and enterprise data sources.\nDemonstrated ability to lead technical delivery and collaborate effectively with multi-functional business and engineering teams.\nPreferred Qualifications\nExperience with agent interoperability standards and protocols, including A2A, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and OpenAPI-based tool integration.\nSkilled in designing enterprise-grade multi-agent systems, human-in-the-loop workflows, and implementing agent guardrails.\nValidated experience with agent evaluation and observability tools such as eval harnesses, tracing, LangSmith, Langfuse, or equivalent AgentOps/LLMOps platforms.\nKnowledge of vector databases and sophisticated retrieval methods, including hybrid search, reranking, multimodal retrieval, and knowledge-graph grounding.\nFamiliarity with AI governance and safety practices, including RBAC, audit logging, PII handling, and controls for high-risk automated actions.\nExperience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and MLOps/LLMOps practices, including cost-aware LLM routing and FinOps.\nUnderstanding of commerce platforms, commerce operations, or supply chain operations.\nConsistent record of leading end-to-end AI or agentic AI delivery in sophisticated enterprise environments.\nAdvanced degree in AI, Machine Learning, Computer Science, or related field preferred.\nWhy Cisco?\nAt 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.\nFueled 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.\nWe are Cisco, and our power starts with you.\nMessage to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada:\nThe starting salary range posted for this position is $169,800.00 to $214,800.00 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.\nU.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.\nU.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:\n10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees\n\n1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco\n\nNon-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\n\nExempt 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)\n\n80 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\n\nAdditional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members\n\nOptional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer\n\nFor non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.\nEmployees 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:\n.75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;\n\n1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;\n\n1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and\n\nOnce performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.\n\nFor non-quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay 0% up to 125% of target. 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