Lead Machine Learning Engineer/Technical Leader

The application window has been extended to 8/15/2025.

Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.

Preference for Boston Metro candidates that can work hybrid in the Downtown Boston office one to two days week. However, open to remote locations within the US. Strong preference will be given to candidates located in Austin, TX; Dallas Metro; Boulder, CO; Bay Area Metro; Atlanta Metro; Ann Arbor, MI; Boston Metro; Fulton/DC Metro; Seattle, WA; and Research Triangle Park

Meet the Team

Cisco Systems offers an extraordinary opportunity to be part of a small, innovative team with a high-throughput, low-process culture. This team, originally founded as a Cisco-funded startup, is building a cutting-edge cloud-native cybersecurity management platform. We are seeking a passionate AI Technical Leader to develop cybersecurity and networking AI agentic workflows that emulate Network Engineers, an industry-first, and contribute toward a vision of smart, self-healing networks.

Your Impact

As a Lead Machine Learning Engineer/Technical Leader yo u will drive the development of advanced AI capabilities in our cybersecurity products! In this role, you will build and lead innovative initiatives that build toward intent-driven, self-healing networks, and build AI that can perform a Network Engineer’s role. You will experiment with state-of-the-art, and execute on state-of-the-practical, working with data from thousands of customers, while contributing to a business that serves as the backbone of the internet!

You should be comfortable operating in a fast-paced, startup-like environment—tackling ambiguous challenges and making data-driven decisions.j

While this is a Lead role, it is primarily a hands-on position as in a start-up. We are looking for a seasoned engineer at their core who is comfortable with code, and brings foundational software engineering skills and deep technical expertise. Although AI tools will be available, we expect candidates to demonstrate exceptional coding.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related field with 8+ years of experience in software development, with at least 5 years of AI/ML experience
• Experience in MLOps & Data Pipelines with data preprocessing, feature engineering, vector databases (Pinecone, Weaviate etc), orchestration, deploying and serving models on public clouds, and monitoring
• Experience with at least one of the AI/ML frameworks and relevant tools around it to build end-to-end AI workflows (Ex: LangChain, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Hugging Face, OpenAI APIs etc)
• 5 + years of professional work experience with Python, Go, Java or another relevant language, with experience with scalable and secure software development practices
• AI/ML experience building and deploying discriminative and generative AI workflows - predictive models, LLM-based applications, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems and AI Agents

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with Networking & Security: Experience with products that make the internet work, and of the cybersecurity landscape, is a plus. Keywords: Next Gen Firewalls, Threat Detection, IPS, TCP/IP stack, VPN, ZTNA, routing, packet analysis, event analysis etc.
• Experience building cloud native apps on AWS
• Experience building platforms and frameworks that democratize tech for large orgs - with particular focus on data and AI facets

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. Simply put - we power the future.

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.

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