Role at a glance
- Job function
-
AI & Data Generative AI Engineering Large Language Model (LLM) Engineering MLOps & ML Infrastructure
- Salary
- $203K – $258.6K/yr
- Location
- 2 Locations, California, United States
- Work arrangement
- On-site
- Employment
- Full-time
- Experience
- 7+ years of software engineering experience, including shipping LLM-powered or agentic features to production.
- Education
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field
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Role Summary
The role joins Cisco’s AI Center of Excellence for Sales, a small senior team that builds seller-facing AI agents in partnership with the Global Specialist Organization and GTM IT engineering. The position focuses on turning sales plays and Cisco data into evaluated, production-ready next-best-action agents that help sellers spend more time with customers.
What You'll Do
- Design prompts, tool use, and multi-step reasoning for next-best-action agent prototypes.
- Translate approved sales plays into agent behaviors and iterate against real seller scenarios.
- Build and iterate against evaluation sets for agent advice quality.
- Integrate LLMs with retrieval over Cisco account-context data while managing latency, cost, and reliability.
- Work with GTM IT engineering to co-design interfaces, review code, and take production-ready agents and evaluation sets into production.
- Make agent suggestions observable so the team can measure whether sellers acted on them.
Generated from the employer's posting. Verify important details before applying.
View full postingQualifications
Minimum qualifications include 7+ years of software engineering experience, production LLM-powered or agentic feature development, LLM APIs, LangGraph, prompting, tool/function calling, agent orchestration, Python, model-output evaluation and testing, experience with ambiguous and evolving requirements, and a bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field.
Required
- 7+ years of software engineering experience
- Shipping LLM-powered or agentic features to production
- LLM APIs
- LangGraph
- Prompting
- Tool/function calling
- Agent orchestration
- Python
Preferred
- Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and vector-search experience
- Exposure to sales or go-to-market systems (CRM, conversation intelligence)
- Production LLM operations experience — latency, cost, reliability, and safety at scale
- Experience shipping jointly with a partner engineering organization
Original job description
Content provided by the employer
Original job description
Content provided by the employer
Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.
Meet the Team
The AI Center of Excellence for Sales is Cisco's engine for putting AI in the hands of every seller. Our mission is direct and ambitious: give sellers more time with customers by taking the non-selling work off their plate. We turn Cisco's best go-to-market plays into seller-facing AI agents that tell a seller — in the flow of the deal — exactly what to do next to win. We do it in close partnership with two teams: the Global Specialist Organization, who owns go-to-market, and the GTM IT engineering team, who we design and build alongside and who runs our AI in production at scale. We are small, senior, and close to the field, and we move fast.
You'll join that pod — a small, senior team led by the Director, GTM AI Architecture — that prototypes fast, proves value with real sellers, and builds shoulder to shoulder with GTM IT engineering to get that work into production. This is a genuinely joint build: you will spend as much time in GTM IT's design reviews as in our own.
Your Impact
• Build the next-best-action agent prototypes. Design the prompts, tool use, and multi-step reasoning that let an agent take customer, seller, opportunity, and Cisco sales-process context and recommend what to do next.
• Turn plays into working agents. Translate approved sales plays into agent behaviors; prototype quickly and iterate against real seller scenarios.
• Build to the evaluation bar. Treat “does this give good advice?” as a measurable target — build and iterate against the team's evaluation sets, not vibes.
• Ground the agents in Cisco data. Integrate LLMs with retrieval over Cisco's account-context data, managing latency, cost, and reliability.
• Ship to production, with GTM IT. Work alongside GTM IT engineering to take production-ready agents and their evaluation sets into production — co-designing the interfaces and reviewing each other's code, not handing work over a wall.
• Feed the closed loop. Make agent suggestions observable so the team can tell whether sellers acted on them.
Minimum Qualifications
• 7+ years of software engineering experience, including shipping LLM-powered or agentic features to production.
• Experience with LLM APIs, LangGraph, prompting, tool/function calling, agent orchestration and programming (Python).
• Experience evaluating and testing model outputs (offline and/or online), not just calling an API.
•Previous experience working from ambiguous, evolving requirements and iterating quickly
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field
Preferred Qualifications
• Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and vector-search experience.
• Exposure to sales or go-to-market systems (CRM, conversation intelligence).
• Production LLM operations experience — latency, cost, reliability, and safety at scale.
• Experience shipping jointly with a partner engineering organization — shared standards, co-owned code, no over-the-wall handoffs.
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 $203,000.00 to $258,600.00 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 - $297,400.00Non-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.
About the company
Cisco
Large Enterprise
Cisco is a global leader in networking technology, dedicated to connecting people and devices through innovative solutions. Founded in 1984, the company specializes in the development of hardware and software that enables secure internet communications, including routers, switches, and cybersecurity solutions. With a strong emphasis on cutting-edge research and development, Cisco continually adapts to the evolving digital landscape, empowering businesses to accelerate their digital transformation and improve operational efficiency. Committed to fostering talent, Cisco provides various career opportunities in fields such as engineering, sales, and technology, making it an ideal destination for aspiring professionals.
Cisco is a global leader in networking technology, dedicated to connecting people and devices through innovative solutions. Founded in 1984, the company specializes in the development of hardware and software that enables secure internet communications, including routers, switches, and cybersecurity solutions. With a strong emphasis on cutting-edge research and development, Cisco continually adapts to the evolving digital landscape, empowering businesses to accelerate their digital transformation and improve operational efficiency. Committed to fostering talent, Cisco provides various career opportunities in fields such as engineering, sales, and technology, making it an ideal destination for aspiring professionals.