Machine Learning Engineer

Machine Learning Engineer

This is a hybrid role based out of Cisco's San Jose or Seattle office. Meet the Team. The Cisco AI Research team is composed of AI research scientists, data scientists, and network engineers with deep subject matter expertise. This diverse group collaborates on both foundational and applied research projects, driven by the challenge of connecting people and devices at a global scale. The team is newly formed and dynamic, blending AI and networking domain experts who work closely with engineers, product managers, and strategists experienced in AI and distributed systems. Members have the opportunity to shape the culture and direction of this growing team.

Your Impact. We are seeking a Machine Learning Engineer to build dynamic troubleshooting agents that don't just monitor networks—they understand them. Our team is solving for the massive complexity of unstructured production log data, optimizing hardware utilization for data collection, and automating the creation of synthetic datasets that push the boundaries of what LLMs can achieve in network configuration and remediation. You won't just be maintaining pipelines, you will be architecting the data infrastructure that allows our models to reason through real-world network failures in real-time.

Design and scale automated pipelines that transform raw, high-velocity production logs into high-quality insights.

Develop systems that generate synthetic data, enabling our models to learn from edge cases that rarely occur in the wild.

Solve network complexity problems by tackling the unique challenges of time and network state dependencies to improve the accuracy of our agents.

Optimize at scale through efficient data collection and hardware utilization, ensuring our ML infrastructure remains performant as our agent capabilities expand.

Help shape the future of Network AI by collaborating directly with researchers to define the next generation of AI-driven network management for Cisco network products such as Meraki, ThousandEyes, Catalyst Center, and Nexus.

Minimum Qualifications.

• Bachelor's degree in STEM and 5+ years of relevant experience, or Master's degree in STEM and 3+ years of relevant experience and or PhD in STEM +0 years of relevant experience or equivalent related work experience
• 5+ years of experience in data engineering, machine learning engineering, or related roles.
• Data Pipeline experience, designing and scaling data pipelines for unstructured or semi-structured data, including ingestion, cleansing, and auditing.
• ML Infrastructure experience working with ML data workflows, including dataset creation, labeling, and evaluation.
• Experience with Python and data processing frameworks (e.g., Spark, Beam, Ray).
• Experience with ML systems and tools, such as training pipelines and model evaluation frameworks.

Preferred Qualifications.

• Experience with human-in-the-loop ML systems, active learning, weak supervision or self-evolving agents.
• Exposure large language models, computer vision, or speech datasets.
• Experience building internal tools or platforms used by annotation or operations teams.

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.

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

The starting salary range posted for this position is $165,300.00 to $209,200.00 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:

$181,000.00 - $270,300.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$165,300.00 - $240,600.00

* 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.