Senior Staff Applied AI Scientist

Meet the Team 

Splunk, a Cisco company, is building a safer, more resilient digital world with an end‑to‑end, full‑stack platform designed for hybrid, multi‑cloud environments. Join the Foundational Modeling team at Splunk, where we advance the state of AI for high‑volume, real‑time, multi‑modal machine‑generated data — including logs, time series, traces, and events. We combine deep AI research expertise with the scale and operational excellence of Splunk and Cisco’s global engineering capabilities. Our work spans networking, security, observability, and customer experience — designing and deploying foundation models that enhance reliability, strengthen security, prevent downtime, and deliver predictive insights across Splunk Observability, Security, and Platform at enterprise scale. You’ll be part of a culture that values technical excellence, impact‑driven innovation, and cross‑functional collaboration — all within a flexible, growth‑oriented environment. 

Your Impact 

• Own the full lifecycle of research, design, and deployment for large‑scale foundation models targeting machine‑generated data — with a primary focus on graph data, complemented by logs, time series, traces, and event modalities. 

• Drive optimization of distributed training and inference pipelines to balance accuracy, performance, and cost at scale.  

• Partner closely with engineering, product, and data science teams to align AI solutions with both technical requirements and strategic business objectives.  

• Elevate organizational expertise by mentoring talent, driving strategic technical forums, and guiding research from inception to product deployment.  

• Shape the AI/ML vision by anticipating industry‑defining advancements and strategically embedding them into the team’s technology roadmap. 

Minimum Qualifications: 

• PhD in Computer Science, or related quantitative field, plus 5+ years of industry research experience.  

• Proven track record in at least one of the following areas: Large-scale graph representation learning and Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) (e.g., GCN/GAT/GraphSAGE, heterogeneous GNNs, graph transformers), large language modeling for structured and unstructured data, multi-modal fusion of graph, text, log, and time-series data. 

• Solid proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow)  

• Experience translating research ideas into production systems. 

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Deep experience with graph representation learning, graph transformers (e.g., GCN/GAT/GraphSAGE), spatio-temporal GNNs, heterogeneous graphs (HGNN/Relational GNNs), and knowledge-graph-augmented modeling.  

• Expertise in constructing and operating on large-scale graphs (entity graphs, service dependency graphs, topology graphs, causal graphs, or log-event graphs).  

• Hands-on experience with frameworks such as PyTorch Geometric (PyG), DGL, GraphGym, GraphML systems, or custom GNN runtimes. 

• Advanced Anomaly Detection with Graph: Track record developing hybrid graph-temporal approaches (e.g., GNN + Transformer, graph contrastive learning, dynamic graph forecasting) for detecting anomalies in high-volume operational data. 

• Large‑Scale Training & Optimization – Experience optimizing model architectures, distributed training pipelines, and inference efficiency to minimize cost and latency while preserving accuracy.  

• MLOps & Continuous Learning – Fluency in automated retraining, drift detection, incremental updates, and production monitoring of ML models. 

• Strong Research Track Record – Publications in top AI/ML conferences or journals (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, AAAI, CVPR, ACL, KDD) demonstrating contributions to state‑of‑the‑art methods and real‑world applications. 

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. 

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:

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

* 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.