{"id":604720,"url":"https://alion.io/job/cisco-systems-director-ai-engineering","title":"Director, AI Engineering","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":"B","score":84,"open_postings":286,"ghost_share":0.045,"stale_share":0.458,"repost_share":0.098,"time_to_fill_p50_days":25,"computed_at":"2026-11-06T05:58:05Z"}},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"head","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Jose, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":250600,"max":416900,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":416900},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":15,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Context Engineering","optional":false},{"name":"Java","optional":false},{"name":"Multi-Agent Systems","optional":false},{"name":"NLP","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-09-09T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-27","last_verified_at":"2026-11-06T05:09:09Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":58,"trust":{"level":"ghost","repost_count":3,"flags":["repost"],"days_open":58},"description":"The application window is expected to close on: 11/19/2026Location: San Jose (Onsite)\nNo relocation will be provided\nMeet the Team\nThe CX AI Incubation and Agent team builds breakthrough solutions across delivery intelligence, network automation, and edge computing for Cisco Customer Experience (CX) and our global customers. We partner across engineering, product, and design to develop scalable, responsible platforms leveraging Generative and Agentic AI. Join an inclusive, high-impact team pushing the boundaries of AI innovation to solve critical enterprise challenges.\nYour Impact\nAs an engineering leader in Cisco CX, you will define and execute the technical strategy for AI solutions that transform customer adoption and renewals. You will lead high-performing engineering teams from concept to production, operationalizing autonomous agents, context engineering, and multi-agent orchestration platforms. In this role, you will combine deep technical architecture with business strategy to deliver production-grade AI systems at scale.\nWhat You’ll Do\nDrive engineering Delivery: Spearhead end-to-end development of agentic AI solutions across the CX customer adoption and renewals portfolio.\nArchitecture and platform: Lead architecture and build core platform to host Agentic solutions.\nLead Engineering Teams: Manage and mentor cross-functional teams of software, ML, and data engineers and technical leaders through full lifecycle delivery.\nStandardize Tech Stack: Evaluate, select, and standardize tools, frameworks, and foundation model infrastructure across the portfolio.\nAlign Cross-Functionally: Partner with product management and business stakeholders to translate strategic requirements into production AI applications.\nSet Engineering Standards: Establish best practices for responsible AI, context engineering, and observable agent deployment.\nMinimum Qualifications\nBachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or related field with 15+ years of software engineering experience (or Master’s degree with 12+ years).\n5+ years of engineering management experience leading software and ML engineering teams.\nExperience programming in Python, Java, C++, or modern object-oriented languages.\nExperience building and scaling data-driven AI/ML systems, AI-native applications, and AI agents, including agent harnesses and production-grade agentic architectures.\nExperience building and deploying systems utilizing LLMs, NLP, Generative AI, or Agentic AI architectures.\nPreferred Qualifications\nAdvanced degree (Master’s or PhD) in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, or Machine Learning.\nExperience architecting multi-agent orchestration pipelines and context engineering systems.\nExperience applying AI solutions to enterprise customer success, adoption, or renewal workflows.\nProven track record of technical leadership and cross-functional execution in fast-paced environments.\nStrong communication skills with the ability to engage technical teams and executive business leaders.\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 $250,600.00 to $362,600.00 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$250,600.00 - $416,900.00Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:\n$241,400.00 - $371,000.00* 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":7542,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":15,"management_years_min":5,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Annual bonuses","Equity","Life insurance","Parental leave","Restricted stock 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