AI Researcher
Cisco · Milpitas, United States +2 · 1d ago
This role will be hybrid out of the San Jose/San Francisco, CA area (2-3 days/week in office).
Meet the Team
The Cisco AI Software & Platform Group drives the development of groundbreaking generative AI applications. We build enterprise AI platforms and developer tooling across the company, integrating our networking, security, and observability portfolio with modern AI to power autonomous systems. Fueled by a passion for AI/ML, we strive to create a secure future for our customers. Our collaborative, agile team thrives on tackling complex challenges and delivering innovative solutions globally.
The AI Threat Intelligence and Security Research team helps make AI safer to build, deploy, and use. We study emerging threats across AI models, applications, agents, and supply chains, then translate our research into practical protections—including red teaming, security tools, threat detections, provenance capabilities, runtime guardrails, and product innovations. We also advance the field through open-source projects, industry frameworks, technical publications, customer and partner engagement, and education.
Your Impact
In this role, you will analyze emerging AI threat vectors, build automated detections, and collaborate closely with other AI/ML teams, product managers, and core engineering teams to protect cloud-scale AI systems. You will:
- Conduct AI threat intelligence research to identify, track, and profile malicious actors and adversarial techniques targeting AI models, applications, and agentic workflows.
- Develop, evaluate, and maintain detection content—including heuristics, behavioral detections, and telemetry-driven analytics—for integration into customer-facing cloud products.
- Research and assess security risks across the AI lifecycle, from model development and training through deployment and runtime use, including prompt injection chains, provenance, data poisoning, backdoors, and malicious dependencies.
- Conduct adversarial testing and red teaming across models, applications, and agentic deployments.
- Translate research into impact through evaluations, detection pipelines, security frameworks, open-source tools, and customer guidance.
- Analyze and synthesize large-scale threat telemetry using modern data platforms such as Snowflake and AI-assisted analysis tools.
- Partner with engineering and product leadership to translate adversarial research into automated, production-ready defense mechanisms inside Cisco Cloud Control.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree plus 5 years of related experience, Master's degree plus 3 years of related experience, or PhD plus 1 year of related experience.
- Prior experience in one or more areas such as cyber threat intelligence (CTI), security research, vulnerability analysis, incident response, or detection engineering. Ability to derive actionable insights from threat intelligence, large datasets, and/or ambiguous signals to inform clear understanding of threat landscape
- Applied experience developing and maintaining detection content, including YARA rules, behavioral detections, or threat queries.
- Experience conducting OSINT-based threat investigations and producing clear, actionable intelligence reports; familiarity with dark-web research methods is a plus.
- Previous experience with threat intelligence platforms and/or evaluating adversarial risks in AI/ML systems, such as prompt injection, data poisoning, model backdoors, evasion, or agent and tool abuse.
Preferred Qualifications
- Applied experience with agentic AI architectures, tool-calling protocols such as the Model Context Protocol, or AI security and guardrail frameworks.
- Proficiency in Python and SQL for research, data analysis, and automation.
- Experience using AI-assisted coding tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex to automate workflows and accelerate research, and improve investigations through scripts, workflows, or other tooling.
- Background in adversarial red teaming, blue teaming, security operations, or mapping threats and controls to frameworks such as the Cisco AI Security and Safety Framework, MITRE ATLAS, and relevant OWASP Top 10 frameworks
- Familiarity with the end-to-end AI lifecycle, including model development and training, data ingestion, application integration, deployment, and runtime security.
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 $184,000.00 to $238,800.00 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:
$184,000.00 - $274,600.00Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:
$168,000.00 - $244,300.00* 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.