# Senior AI Researcher

**Company**: Cisco
**Experience**: senior
**Job type**: full-time
**Salary**: $216,300.00 - $280,800.00
**Category**: Research
**Industry**: Technology

**Apply**: https://cisco.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Cisco_Careers/job/San-Francisco-California-US/Senior-AI-Researcher_2018923?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply
**Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_abdbde71-ca1

## Description

At Foundation AI, part of Cisco, we're leading frontier AI research. Our mission is to advance artificial intelligence through fundamental research and translate breakthroughs into technologies that power the next generation of enterprise AI.

As a Senior AI Researcher, you will be a visionary technical leader, architecting and executing frontier AI research that dictates Foundation AI's long-term technical trajectory. You will identify emerging research opportunities, formulate original research hypotheses, and lead research programs spanning foundation models, agentic AI, reasoning, multimodal learning, and large-scale AI systems. You will work closely with engineering and product teams to translate scientific advances into scalable technologies that differentiate Cisco's AI platform.

**Minimum Qualifications:**

- PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related field, plus 5+ years of relevant research experience.

- Demonstrated track record of high-impact publications at top-tier machine learning and AI conferences.

- Expertise in foundation models, post-training and alignment, LLMs, agentic AI, reinforcement learning, reasoning, efficient inference, or distributed training.

- 5+ years of hands-on Python and PyTorch experience, including training and optimizing models across multi-GPU or distributed environments.

- Proven ability to lead complex technical projects from conception to deployment.

**Preferred Qualifications:**

- Hands-on expertise in high-performance computing environments, with a track record of leading distributed training across thousands of GPUs.

- Experience deploying high-performance inference engines and working with cloud-native deployment, Docker, Kubernetes, MLOps pipelines, and major cloud platforms.

- Experience designing and scaling agentic AI workflows, multi-agent frameworks, and autonomous AI systems.

- Familiarity with cybersecurity principles, AI systems for security-focused use cases, safety, and robust machine learning.

- Demonstrated leadership within the global AI research community.

**Benefits:**

- Medical, dental, and vision insurance

- 401(k) plan with Cisco matching contribution

- Paid parental leave

- Short and long-term disability coverage

- Basic life insurance

- Paid time away, including holidays, vacation time, and sick time

- Optional 10 paid days per year to volunteer

**Salary Range:** $216,300.00 - $280,800.00 per year (U.S. and Canada locations)

## Skills

### Required
- Python
- PyTorch
- Machine Learning
- Artificial Intelligence
- Computer Science

### Nice to have
- High-performance computing
- Distributed training
- Cloud-native deployment
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- MLOps pipelines
- Cybersecurity principles
- Agentic AI workflows

---

Source: [Apply at cisco.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com](https://cisco.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Cisco_Careers/job/San-Francisco-California-US/Senior-AI-Researcher_2018923?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply)