Staff Software Engineer - AI/Security Platform
Cisco · San Francisco, United States +1 · 18d ago
Meet the Team
We are an agile team with a startup feel and a strong bias for action. We move fast, embrace failure as part of the process, and stay focused on solving real-world problems for defenders on the front lines. Our team blends deep expertise in AI, cybersecurity, platform and systems engineering. We are driven by a shared belief that the only way to outpace hackers is through AI advancements that free up humans to tackle real threats and more challenging problems.
This is a place for builders who thrive in ambiguity, challenge the status quo, and care deeply about making a meaningful impact. If you’re energized by tough problems, excited to shape the future of cyber defense, and eager to work alongside passionate experts, you’ll feel right at home.
Your Impact
Design and build systems that combine security-relevant data, detection signals, context, and foundation models to spot and predict threats, those in action and those that are about to happen.
Prototype and test new AI features - from decoding events and system environments to predicting anomalies and threats - working closely with security SMEs and security researchers to validate real-world utility.
Develop an AI DevOps pipeline to enable rapid experimentation with data. Knowledge bases, models, and context memory, using clear, measurable success criteria to evaluate iterations.
Architect and build the distributed platform that can correlate trillions of events & signals, and can synthesize them into explainable findings and alerts, consumed by our triage resolution agents – you will be building a key capability of the Agentic SOC.
Collaborate with product and platform teams to co-design AI-enhanced threat detection and prediction workflows that are intuitive, scalable, and immediately useful to analysts.
Contribute to the core architecture powering AI-native security operations, helping to shape how Splunk and Cisco scale trusted automation across the enterprise.
Minimum Qualifications
Bachelor's Degree with 8+ years of related experience or Master's with 6+ years of related experience.
Experience with storage systems and storage access layers
Experience implementing data platforms and/or data lakes and warehouses.
Experience building scalable backend services, APIs, and automation workflows in Python.
Experience designing agent systems that will perform coding tasks for you.
Experience working with common telemetry data sources such as endpoint logs, network traffic, authentication events, or cloud audit trails and understanding how they’re used in detection and investigation workflows.
Preferred Qualifications
Security Data Engineering – Experience building and maintaining pipelines for ingesting, parsing, and normalizing large-scale security telemetry.
Security Operations Experience – Understanding of security operations concepts, including attack surface management, threat analytics, detection, triage, investigation, and response. Alternatively, former Tier 3 SOC analyst or equivalent, with experience automating SecOps workflows and building scalable, resilient detection infrastructure.
RAG and GraphRAG Search Implementation – Hands-on experience developing retrieval-augmented generation pipelines and working with databases (e.g., FAISS, Pinecone).
Model Integration – Skilled in crafting, testing, and optimizing training workloads for large language or special-purpose models such as GNNs, GCNs, GATs. Ideally, you have contributed to or shipped an AI-powered feature or product and understand the nuances of integrating models into real-world workflows - including usability, performance, and trust considerations.
AI Evaluation & Experimentation – Capable of designing experiments to evaluate model output for accuracy, usability, performance, and cost
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 $186,900.00 to $267,700.00 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:
$186,900.00 - $307,800.00Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:
$166,300.00 - $274,100.00* 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.