{"id":619297,"url":"https://alion.io/job/cisco-systems-ai-researcher","title":"AI Researcher","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":91,"open_postings":288,"ghost_share":0.014,"stale_share":0.479,"repost_share":0.063,"time_to_fill_p50_days":16,"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"}},"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":["San Jose, United States","Seattle, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":216300,"max":322900,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":322900},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Edge AI","optional":false},{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"Hugging Face","optional":false},{"name":"JAX","optional":false},{"name":"LoRA","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Multimodal AI","optional":false},{"name":"PEFT","optional":false},{"name":"Post-training","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"QLoRA","optional":false},{"name":"Reinforcement Learning","optional":false},{"name":"SFT","optional":false},{"name":"TensorFlow","optional":false},{"name":"Transformers","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Evaluation","optional":true},{"name":"RAG","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-08T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-29","last_verified_at":"2026-10-18T07:56:53Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":41,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":1,"flags":[],"days_open":41},"description":"The application window is expected to close on: 10/01/2026Meet the Team\nJoin Cisco's AI Platform Team to shape the future of enterprise AI. We're building next-generation infrastructure that powers intelligent, secure, and scalable AI solutions across Cisco's ecosystem-from advancing Small Language Model capabilities and building Agentic frameworks to ensuring trustworthy AI deployment at scale. You'll join as a core member of our team, working with AI researchers, data scientists, and engineers to transform research into real business impact. In this role, you'll translate cutting-edge AI research into production solutions for internal business units and external customers. If you're passionate about solving hard technical problems and shaping how AI transforms the enterprise, this is where you'll make it happen.\nYour Impact\nAs an Applied AI Researcher, you will work with other AI researchers to take methods from paper and prototype into production models on NeuralFabric-domain models, RL, and agent simulation that Cisco and customers can actually use.\nPartner with AI researchers to design, train, and fine-tune Small Language Models for network, security, observability, and operations problems using current post-training techniques.\n\nAdvance reinforcement learning, Auto Gym, and agent-simulation methods with the research team, and turn those methods into reusable training and evaluation recipes on the platform.\n\nDefine evaluation methods and promotion gates with researchers and engineers so model quality is measurable and repeatable.\n\nStay current with LLMs, SLMs, multi-modal models, and agents, and apply that research to internal and customer use cases through technical deep-dives-not as a dedicated forward-deployment owner.\n\nMinimum Qualifications\nPhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field with 5+ years of experience in applied AI/ML research or engineering.\n\nExperience independently designing, training, and fine-tuning language models for production or applied research use.\n\nPrevious use of Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, or Hugging Face Transformers.\n\nExperience with advanced post-training methods such as LoRA, QLoRA, PEFT, instruction tuning, supervised fine-tuning, or reinforcement learning from human or AI feedback.\n\nTrack record of leading applied AI projects from research through production deployment, with documented outcomes across more than one domain or problem.\n\nPreferred Qualifications\nPublications in top AI conferences such as ACL, EMNLP, ICLR, ICML, NAACL, or NeurIPS.\n\nExperience with Small Language Models, efficient architectures, model compression, reinforcement learning, gym-style training environments, or agent evaluation harnesses.\n\nFamiliarity with networking, cybersecurity, observability, or IT operations domains.\n\nExperience with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), advanced evaluation methodologies, and model promotion or lineage gates.\n\nAbility to work closely with other AI researchers and engineers, explain technical work and collaborate with business-unit or customer partners when a use case requires it.\n\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 $216,300.00 to $280,800.00 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. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.\nThe applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:\nNew York City Metro Area:\n$216,300.00 - $322,900.00Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:\n$197,500.00 - $287,300.00* 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.\n** Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.","description_format":"text","description_chars":7689,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"phd","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Annual bonuses","Equity","Life insurance","Parental leave","Restricted stock units","Vision insurance"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Cybersecurity","Government","Endpoint Security","Observability & APM"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-10T18:38:53Z"},{"event":"close","at":"2026-09-18T22:48:51Z"},{"event":"reopen","at":"2026-09-30T00:51:48Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 1,384 · green card filings: 608","filings_12m":1384,"filings_prev_12m":1364,"green_card_filings_12m":608,"median_offered_wage_usd":152500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)","US Department of Labor: PERM disclosure data (green cards)"],"filings_for_role_12m":613}],"liveness":{"score":18,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.508,"p_room":0.35,"age_days":39,"expected_fill_days":16,"reasons":["conf:1","velocity","win:tail","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":322900,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/cisco-systems-ai-researcher","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/cisco-systems-ai-researcher.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-19T05:42:36Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":3511,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-20T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":90},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=90"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fcisco-systems-ai-researcher"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fcisco-systems-ai-researcher"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fcisco-systems-ai-researcher"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/cisco-systems-ai-researcher\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fcisco-systems-ai-researcher"}]}