# Software Engineer NextGen AI Search at Cisco

Cisco is hiring a Software Engineer NextGen AI Search in San Jose, United States. It pays $168k-$245k a year and Level rates it Works on AI ●●●○; you can [apply on Cisco](https://jobsbylevel.com/go/c3bcdf18-f51a-401d-bc54-a931bbb603e1?utm_medium=ai-agent).

AI Level 3, AI centrality 61 out of 100. San Jose, California, US.

## Details

- Company: [Cisco](https://jobsbylevel.com/companies/cisco)
- AI level: AI Level 3 (score 61 out of 100)
- Location: San Jose, California, US
- Salary: $168k-$245k
- Posted: November 13, 2026
- Apply: https://jobsbylevel.com/go/c3bcdf18-f51a-401d-bc54-a931bbb603e1?utm_medium=ai-agent
- Free CV review for this job: https://jobsbylevel.com/cv-review?job=software-engineer-nextgen-ai-search-at-cisco-e1fedd

## Prepare for this job

The job page lists 5 likely interview questions for this offer, with a CV checklist: https://jobsbylevel.com/jobs/software-engineer-nextgen-ai-search-at-cisco-e1fedd

## Description

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

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Source: https://jobsbylevel.com/jobs/software-engineer-nextgen-ai-search-at-cisco-e1fedd

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