AI Operations Engineer

2021485 – AI Operations Engineer (Hybrid)

• This position is listed as hybrid – eligible candidates should expect to be present in the Raleigh-Cisco office on a semi-regular basis.
• Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.

Meet the Team

Join Cisco’s Commerce Operations Engineering Center (COEC) as an AI Engineer, where you will be part of a dynamic team driving innovation through AI-powered automation. Collaborate with multi-functional AI, engineering, and operations teams to transform sophisticated operational challenges into reliable, scalable AI solutions that advance Cisco’s AI-first future.

Your Impact

As an AI Engineer in COEC, you will design, build, and operate production-ready AI agents that power Cisco’s Commerce Operations. You will translate complex operational needs into automated workflows by orchestrating LLM reasoning, tool/function calling, retrieval, enterprise integrations, and agent-to-agent communication. You will be responsible for the full lifecycle of AI agent delivery—from solution design, guardrails, and system integration to evaluation, deployment, monitoring, and continuous improvement. Your work will help eliminate manual tasks, improve speed and accuracy, and drive operational excellence.

What You’ll Do

• Design and build AI agents that automate manual and repetitive Commerce Operations tasks.
• Implement agent orchestration using frameworks such as LangGraph, LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI, or equivalent.
• Build agent-to-agent integrations using emerging standards such as A2A and MCP to enable reliable coordination and delegation.
• Design secure API integrations with commerce platforms and enterprise data sources using REST, GraphQL, webhooks, event-driven services, authentication, rate limiting, and error handling.
• Build and optimize retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines using documents, structured data, and knowledge repositories.
• Implement guardrails, human approval gates, LLM routing, and failover mechanisms to ensure reliability, safety, and cost control.
• Apply prompt and context engineering to ensure AI agents deliver accurate, safe, and consistent outcomes.
• Build evaluation and observability capabilities, including offline test sets, online monitoring, tracing, audit logging, and quality regression detection.
• Own deployment and production operations, including CI/CD, progressive rollout, rollback, monitoring, model/version control, and cost tracking.
• Supervise AI solution performance and report business impact through critical metrics such as efficiency gains, cycle-time reduction, incident reduction, and operational accuracy.
• Continuously improve AI workflows, tools, and methodologies to increase reliability, scalability, and business value.
• Partner with Commerce Operations, application development, infrastructure, and business teams to integrate AI solutions into existing systems and workflows.

Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in software engineering or a related field within an enterprise environment.
• Shown experience building and deploying LLM-powered or agentic AI applications in production.
• Strong Python skills and tactical experience with LLM/agent frameworks such as LangChain, LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, OpenAI SDK, Anthropic SDK, or equivalents.
• Practical expertise in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), prompt engineering, tool/function calling, agent orchestration, and multi-agent communication or workflow orchestration.
• Experience with API and system integrations, including REST, GraphQL, event-driven services, authentication, and enterprise data sources.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical delivery and collaborate effectively with multi-functional business and engineering teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with agent interoperability standards and protocols, including A2A, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and OpenAPI-based tool integration.
• Skilled in designing enterprise-grade multi-agent systems, human-in-the-loop workflows, and implementing agent guardrails.
• Validated experience with agent evaluation and observability tools such as eval harnesses, tracing, LangSmith, Langfuse, or equivalent AgentOps/LLMOps platforms.
• Knowledge of vector databases and sophisticated retrieval methods, including hybrid search, reranking, multimodal retrieval, and knowledge-graph grounding.
• Familiarity with AI governance and safety practices, including RBAC, audit logging, PII handling, and controls for high-risk automated actions.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and MLOps/LLMOps practices, including cost-aware LLM routing and FinOps.
• Understanding of commerce platforms, commerce operations, or supply chain operations.
• Consistent record of leading end-to-end AI or agentic AI delivery in sophisticated enterprise environments.
• Advanced degree in AI, Machine Learning, Computer Science, or related field preferred.

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 $169,800.00 to $214,800.00 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:

$203,000.00 - $297,400.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$181,000.00 - $264,600.00

* 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.