Principal Engineer | AI and Security | 13+ years

Meet the Team

The Infrastructure & Security CTO organization is shaping the future of Cisco’s core products by driving AI-driven, cloud-native, security-first architectures across networking and security platforms.

Your Impact

As a Principal Engineer, you will define how AI and security are embedded into Cisco’s core networking and security products. You will work at the intersection of LLMs, Zero Trust security, and cloud-native systems, delivering innovations that improve threat detection, enable secure access, and automate operations at scale.

What You’ll Do

• Integrate AI/ML and LLMs into platforms for threat detection, anomaly analysis, and intelligent policy enforcement

• Design security-first architectures, including firewall, Zero Trust / secure access, and runtime security (e.g., Tetragon / eBPF)

• Build cloud-native platform capabilities leveraging Kubernetes and multi-cloud environments

• Develop large-scale telemetry, data pipelines, and real-time inference systems to power AI-driven insights

• Design solutions across the AI security lifecycle, including model/data protection, access control, and runtime enforcement

• Drive end-to-end execution from architecture through production, including hands-on design and critical-path development

• Partner with product teams to deliver customer-facing innovation and monetization opportunities

• Lead and mentor across teams spanning security, AI, and platform engineering

Minimum Qualifications

• 12+ years in platform engineering, distributed systems, or security architecture

• Strong expertise in:

◦ Network and cloud security (firewalls, Zero Trust, secure access)

◦ Cloud-native systems (Kubernetes, microservices)

• Experience with cloud-native security (e.g., Tetragon, eBPF, or similar)

• Hands-on production experience building LLM/AI applications for security use cases, including deployment and scaling

• Strong programming skills in C/C++, Go, and/or Java, with Python for AI integration and automation

• Experience building large-scale, telemetry/data-driven platforms

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience applying AI to security or networking platforms at scale

• Deep knowledge of Zero Trust, SSE/SASE, and identity-driven architectures

• Experience with multi-cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP)

• Strong product mindset—connecting platform innovation to business outcomes

• Proven ability to drive cross-functional initiatives from concept to production

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.