Director - AI Research and Engineering Efficiency (Circuit Platform)

About the role

The AI Platforms and Enablement team is seeking an experienced AI Architect to lead the design, implementation, and optimization of advanced AI systems at Cisco. This role requires a deep understanding of AI/ML systems, model deployment, and production software engineering practices.

Responsibilities

• Direct, mentor, and work alongside a specialized team of AI practitioners.
• Define Cisco-scale agentic system architecture, including planning, tool execution, agent-to-agent handoffs, memory, persistent state, human approval, policy enforcement, secure tool access, observability, and failure recovery.
• Build rigorous evaluation harnesses for models, prompts, RAG systems, tools, agents, and multi-agent workflows.
• Establish offline and online metrics for task success, tool-call accuracy, groundedness, hallucination rate, safety, latency, and cost.
• Own the strategy for frontier models, open-weight LLMs, SLMs, fine-tuned domain models, distilled models, and model routers.
• Drive model-serving efficiency through routing, batching, caching, quantization, distillation, context optimization, structured outputs, and serving-stack improvements.
• Track breakthroughs in AI research and translate them into production-grade capabilities, reusable platform primitives, and validated improvements to CIRCUIT.
• Accelerate internal AI development through better tooling, reusable agent patterns, evaluation frameworks, deployment pipelines, and AI-assisted engineering workflows.
• Optimize a substantial annual model spend portfolio, drive critical reliability targets (p95/p99 latency, groundedness), and lead a multidisciplinary team of researchers and engineers.
• Set the technical AI strategy in partnership with VP/SVP-level leadership across engineering, product, and security.
• Drive tangible improvements in AI productivity, agent reliability, model quality, inference economics, and developer velocity.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, AI/ML, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 15+ years or a PhD with 10+ years of combined experience in software engineering, systems architecture, machine learning, AI platforms or distributed systems.
• Experience architecting or operating production LLM, agentic AI, model-serving, or applied AI systems at enterprise scale.
• Demonstrated ability to build or lead evaluation systems for LLMs, RAG pipelines, tools, autonomous agents, or model-powered enterprise workflows.
• Deep expertise in AI/ML systems, model deployment, distributed platform design, applied AI architecture, and production software engineering practices.
• Prior experience driving platform strategy and technical innovation at enterprise scale.
• Demonstrated experience influencing product, engineering, security, infrastructure, and leadership organizations through technical strategy, architecture reviews, prototypes, and measurable platform outcomes.

Qualifications

• Advanced degree or equivalent experience (Master's or PhD) in Computer Science, AI/ML, Systems Engineering, or a related field.
• Deep expertise in enterprise AI platforms, LLMs, SLMs, agentic systems, and model-serving architectures (e.g., vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, Ray, Kubernetes-based GPU platforms).
• Extensive experience with agent runtimes, orchestration, tool-calling, human-in-the-loop workflows, memory management, and observability.
• Proven ability to build rigorous evaluation frameworks, including golden datasets, adversarial testing, online experimentation, and release gates.
• Strong understanding of enterprise AI security, policy enforcement, data privacy, and production-grade governance.
• Demonstrated success in delivering complex AI business applications and translating powerful research into scalable, production-grade platform capabilities.

Benefits

Cisco offers competitive compensation, comprehensive benefits, and a supportive work environment. The starting salary range for this position is $291,500.00 to $369,100.00, subject to location and individual performance. Additional benefits 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. Cisco also provides generous paid time off, flexible vacation time off, and opportunities for professional growth and development.

Schedule

This role is full-time and based in Cisco's headquarters in San Jose, California.

Pay

The starting salary range for this position is $291,500.00 to $369,100.00, subject to location and individual performance. For quota-based sales roles, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.