AI Operations Engineer
Cisco is hiring an AI Operations Engineer. It pays $170k-$215k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Cisco.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this role Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
- The posting mentions OpenAI, Claude and Anthropic among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a senior role.
- Cisco has 1,500+ other open roles on Level.
- Posted in the last few days.
AI in this role
2027488 – AI Operations Engineer – (Hybrid)
- NOTE: Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.
- This role is listed as hybrid – eligible new-hire candidates will need to live in proximity to a physical location and be present in office on a semi-regular basis.
Meet the Team
You’ll work with a small team of upbeat developers providing applications which support Cisco’s Vulnerability Tracking and Disclosure processes. You’ll work to incorporate AI-enhancements to enable the next generation of Cisco’s tools and processes. You’ll be given plenty of leeway to use your skills to brainstorm, build, and implement exciting new AI capabilities which improve the team’s workflow and enhance information and services available to Cisco customers.
Your Impact
You will serve as a primary engineer on ground breaking AI projects to accelerate how Cisco assesses, remediates, and reports Security Vulnerability applicability to Cisco and Third-Party code bases. You will develop, build, and operate agentic AI workflows for vulnerability analysis and evaluate the performance of system outputs. By locating new data sources and crafting feedback loops, you will systematically improve the correctness and quality of agentic actions. Additionally, you will design scaling strategies and infrastructure based on compute performance evaluations and partner with vulnerability analysts to validate outputs.
Minimum Qualifications
- Experience: 7+ years of professional software-development experience, including the design and delivery of applications powered by large language models
- Programming: Proficiency in Python and experience developing production APIs and services
- Applied AI: Experience using commercial foundation models (e.g., OpenAI GPT, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini) and implementing RAG, embeddings, structured outputs, and agentic workflows
- Production Engineering: Experience with cloud platforms, REST APIs,
- SQL/data systems, Git, CI/CD, and observability tools
Preferred Qualifications
- Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or a related technical rigor (or equivalent professional experience)
- Security Domain: Certifications in or proven experience working in computer security or vulnerability management.
- AI Orchestration: Experience with LangGraph, LangChain, or equivalent orchestration frameworks, and LLM observability platforms.
- Infrastructure: Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, vector databases, and MCP; or equivalent.
- Data Systems: Experience with Postgres databases.
- AI Scaling: Experience operating AI applications at production scale, including fine-tuning and post-training.
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 - $297,400.00Non-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.
How we rate this
AI Operations Engineer at Cisco rates 6 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Little AI. AI is not part of the work.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Questions you could be asked
- How would you design a retrieval step so the model answers from real data instead of guessing?
- How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
- Walk me through fine-tuning a model: what data did you use, and how did you check the result?
- What's a project where you used OpenAI hands-on?
- Walk me through how you've used Claude in your day-to-day work.
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: RAG, AI agents, Fine-tuning, OpenAI, and Claude. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
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