Senior AI/ML Platform Engineer (LLM/SLM Inference)

The application window is expected to close on: 06/26/2026

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

Meet the Team

Join Cisco’s CX AI Incubation Team as a Senior AI/ML DevOps Engineer and help productionize LLM/SLM capabilities for Intelligent Customer Experiences, across cloud and on-prem environments. In Cisco CX, you will build and operate scalable AI systems that move from prototype to production, powering delivery intelligence, network automation, infrastructure testing, and intelligence on edge.

You will collaborate with product and engineering teams to deploy reliable, secure, and observable AI services, optimizing inference performance from CPU and small GPUs to large multi-GPU servers, including air-gapped and customer-managed deployments.

Your Impact

Join Cisco’s Customer Experience (CX) AI Incubation team to build and run production-grade AI platforms and services that transform customer engagement and operational efficiency. You will focus on end-to-end AI DevOps for LLMs/SLMs, including on-prem inference packaging, runtime optimization, deployment automation, and model/service observability. This role requires strong software engineering, hands-on GPU inference experience, and a track record of operationalizing models at scale.

What You’ll Do

• Productionize LLM/SLM-powered features by building robust model-serving and deployment pipelines (cloud + on-prem) with clear SLAs, monitoring, and rollback strategies.

• Optimize inference performance across CPU, small GPUs, and large multi-GPU servers using quantization, batching, KV-cache strategies, and runtime tuning for cost and latency.

• Package and integrate on-prem inference stacks (VM/containers) with customer environments, including secure configuration, versioning, and upgrade-safe deployments.

• Design scalable serving architectures for generative AI (multi-tenant, secure, cost-aware), including capacity planning and performance benchmarking.

• Build automated CI/CD for models and prompts: evaluation gates, regression testing, artifact management, and reproducible releases.

• Implement model and service observability: latency/throughput metrics, quality drift signals, safety checks, and incident triage workflows.

• Support training and fine-tuning workflows for LLMs/SLMs, including data curation, experiment tracking, and packaging models for production.

• Partner with product and engineering to integrate AI services into applications, ensuring reliability, security, and responsible AI behavior.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degreewith7+ years ofrelatedexperience, orMaster’sdegree with4+ years ofrelatedexperience.

• Experience in Python, Java or C++, and building production services for ML/AI workloads.

• Experience withPyTorch/TensorFlow and tooling across the ML lifecycle (data pipelines, training, evaluation, deployment).

• Experience deploying and operating NLP/Generative AI systems in production, including performance tuning and reliability practices.

• Experience working in cross-functional teams, delivering in fast-paced environments, and communicating technical concepts clearly.

Preferred Qualifications

• Proven experience productionizing LLMs/SLMs with GPU-backed inference and runtime optimization (quantization, batching, parallelism).

• Hands-on experience with on-prem deployment patterns (air-gapped, customer-managed), including packaging, integration, andupgradestrategy.

• Experience with AI infrastructure andMLOps/AI DevOps tooling (K8s, CI/CD, model registry, experiment tracking, observability).

• Familiarity with inference engines and GPU profiling (vLLM, Triton,TensorRT-LLM, llama.cpp).

• Exposure to edge deployments and resource-constrained inference environments.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to contribute to design discussions and documentation.

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.

Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada:

The starting salary range posted for this position is $199,700.00 to $254,600.00 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.

U.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.

U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:

• 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees

• 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco

• Non-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

• Exempt 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)

• 80 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

• Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members

• Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer

For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.

Employees 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:

• .75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;

• 1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;

• 1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and

• Once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.

For 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.

The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:

New York City Metro Area:

$199,700.00 - $292,800.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$174,500.00 - $260,500.00

• 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.

** Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.

Cisco is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, genetic information, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected basis.

Cisco will consider for employment, on a case by case basis, qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.