Software Engineer Nextgen AI Search

The application window is expected to close on: 12/30/2026

Meet the Team

The AI Platforms and Enablement team is the engine behind Cisco’s internal AI transformation. Our mission is to build and scale CIRCUIT, our universal enterprise AI platform designed to collapse information silos and amplify productivity through intelligent, agentic experiences. As a Technical Leader, you will sit at the intersection of Data Engineering, Search Science, and Generative AI. You will lead a team of engineers to build the core infrastructure that allows our internal tools to "know" our data and act upon it. You will be responsible for the technical integrity of our search pipelines, the reliability of our LLM integrations, and the scalability of our agentic workflows.

Your Impact

You will lead the design and implementation of high-scale data ingestion pipelines using Dataflow (Apache Beam) and Elasticsearch, ensuring that internal data is indexed, searchable, and ready for LLM consumption. You will own the search core, implementing advanced re-ranking algorithms and refining relevancy metrics to ensure that the information retrieved by our AI agents is accurate, timely, and high-quality. You will design and oversee the development of AI Agents, focusing on multi-step reasoning, tool-calling, and stable state management in production environments.

You will ensure our AI capabilities are production-grade by managing deployments on Kubernetes (GCP), ensuring high availability, and implementing robust monitoring and observability. Additionally, you will act as the primary technical point of contact for stakeholders, evaluate and integrate various models, and champion the use of AI-assisted engineering and modern CI/CD practices to accelerate the team’s velocity.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelors + 7 years of related experience, or Masters + 4 years of related experience, or PhD + 1 year of related experience, or equivalent related work experience
• 7+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 2 years in a lead or high-level individual contributor role.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience designing and operating Elasticsearch in a production environment.
• Proven experience in high-scale data engineering, search infrastructure, and building robust ingestion pipelines using Dataflow (Apache Beam).
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical projects from inception to production deployment, including experience with GCP and Kubernetes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Expertise in designing and implementing hybrid search architectures, combining semantic (vector-based) and keyword (BM25) results.
• Experience building RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) systems, including prompt engineering, chaining, and optimizing LLM outputs.
• Extensive experience building and consuming REST APIs and integrating third-party services.
• Experience setting up MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers and exploring novel ways to connect LLMs to private data.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools (Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Claude) and the ability to define quantitative success metrics for search results.

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 $167,700.00 to $245,200.00 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:

$167,700.00 - $282,000.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$149,100.00 - $250,900.00

* 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.