# Principal AI Researcher

**Company**: Cisco
**Location**: Seattle
**Work arrangement**: hybrid
**Experience**: senior
**Job type**: full-time
**Salary**: $263,700.00 to $333,400.00
**Category**: Research
**Industry**: Technology

**Apply**: https://cisco.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Cisco_Careers/job/Seattle-Washington-US/Principal-AI-Researcher--AISWP--Hybrid-_2023217?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply
**Canonical**: https://yubhub.co/jobs/job_b2e55692-d6e

## Description

The Cisco AI Research team is seeking a Principal AI Researcher to define the technical vision and overarching architecture for Cisco's proprietary intelligence. The successful candidate will serve as a primary catalyst for how Cisco secures and automates the global network.

Responsibilities:

- Define and drive the overarching strategic research roadmap for purpose-built large language models securing and optimizing Cisco's networking, security, data center, and observability infrastructure.

- Spearhead massive-scale pre-training, continued pre-training (CPT), and advanced reinforcement learning initiatives to establish industry-leading foundational models.

- Architect advanced agentic frameworks and autonomous operations, pushing the boundaries of reasoning capabilities and intelligent routing layers for IT environments.

- Serve as a principal technical advisor to executive leadership, translating abstract AI research breakthroughs into scalable, enterprise-grade product ecosystems.

- Elevate Cisco's position as a premier global leader by publishing high-impact research, spearheading workshop proposals at top-tier AI venues, and driving the broader scientific discourse.

Minimum Qualifications:

- Bachelor's degree in STEM with 15+ years of experience, a Master's degree with 12+ years of experience, or a PhD in STEM or a related technical field with 8+ years of highly relevant research experience.

- Experience architecting and leading multiple full-cycle pre-training, continual pre-training, or reinforcement learning pipelines for massive-scale foundational models.

- Minimum of 6 publications in top-tier AI venues (ACL, EMNLP, ICLR, ICML, NAACL, NeurIPS).

- 5+ years of experience engineering and scaling training pipelines using PyTorch or similar frameworks on massive distributed computing environments.

- 4+ years of experience pioneering the application of generative ML models to highly complex, domain-specific systems.

Preferred Qualifications:

- Demonstrated experience defining the technical architecture for AI Developer Experiences, agentic frameworks, or autonomous troubleshooting agents deployed in production environments.

- Deep expertise in advanced optimization methodologies, including context engineering, efficient serving architectures, and low-latency inference pipelines.

- Exceptional executive-level communication skills, with the ability to influence company-wide technical direction.

- History of organizing or leading initiatives within the academic community.

- Domain expertise in networking or cybersecurity.

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 (vacation, holidays, sick time)

- Optional 10 paid days per year to volunteer

Salary Range: $263,700.00 to $333,400.00

## Skills

### Required
- Python
- PyTorch
- reinforcement learning
- large language models
- AI research

### Nice to have
- agentic frameworks
- autonomous operations
- optimization methodologies
- executive-level communication

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Source: [Apply at cisco.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com](https://cisco.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Cisco_Careers/job/Seattle-Washington-US/Principal-AI-Researcher--AISWP--Hybrid-_2023217?utm_source=yubhub.co&utm_medium=jobs_feed&utm_campaign=apply)