Cisco Systems, Inc. is looking for a Distinguished Machine Learning Engineer to define and evolve the technical vision and strategy for AI/ML capabilities across Splunk's product portfolio. In this role, you will shape and drive our AI technology roadmap with innovations to deliver best-in-class AI solutions to our customers.
What You'll Do
- Define and evolve the technical vision and strategy for AI/ML capabilities across our product portfolio.
- Shape and drive our AI technology roadmap with innovative solutions for our customers.
- Work with the senior leadership team to build awareness and alignment to accelerate AI technology adoption.
- Effectively communicate with and influence key stakeholders across the enterprise, at all levels.
- Provide technical guidance and mentorship to the multi-functional team and promote a culture of engineering excellence.
- Collaborate with fellow technical leaders to ensure the successful and timely delivery of AI/ML models and service integration.
- Identify and mitigate risks in our plans and executions, especially at the intersection of business and engineering.
What We're Looking For
- Masters in Computer Science or a related quantitative field, plus 12+ years of industry research experience.
- Prior experience in at least one of the following areas: deep learning, reinforcement learning, unsupervised learning, natural language processing, or time series modeling.
- Proven track record in Generative AI technology including Large Language Models (LLM), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Fine Tuning, and Agentic AI.
- Experience working with large-scale production systems across model training and inference.
Nice to Have
- PhD in Computer Science or a related quantitative field.
- Background in building and adapting large-scale language models (e.g., T5, BERT, LLaMA, GPTs) for specialized domains including structured/unstructured logs, text, and event sequences.
- Strong background fusing logs, time series, traces, tabular data, and graphs for foundation models tackling complex operational insights.
- Experience optimizing model architectures, distributed training pipelines, and inference efficiency to minimize cost and latency while preserving accuracy.
- Publications in top AI/ML conferences or journals (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, AAAI, CVPR, ACL, KDD).
- Demonstrated experience in leading impactful AI product development at scale.
- Demonstrated experience in developing large-scale, complex models and deploying them in production systems.
- Demonstrated experience in large-scale data processing and parallel computing – GPU, multi-GPU and distributed training.
- Demonstrated experience in building strong internal and external partnerships.
Team & Environment
This role is part of the AI team at Splunk, a Cisco company.
Benefits & Compensation
- Starting compensation range for U.S. and/or Canada locations: $337,100.00 - $426,700.00. Full ranges: New York City Metro Area: $337,100.00 - $490,700.00; Non-Metro New York state & Washington state: $299,900.00 - $436,700.00.
- Equity: Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units.
- Medical, dental and vision insurance.
- 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution.
- Paid parental leave.
- Short and long-term disability coverage.
- Basic life insurance.
- Grants of Cisco restricted stock units.
- 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.
- Non-exempt employees receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year.
- Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program.
- 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter.
- Additional paid time away may be requested for critical or emergency family issues.
- Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer.
- Annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies (for non-sales roles).
Work Mode
This role is global, with locations in the U.S.
Cisco Systems is an equal opportunity employer.
