Machine Learning Engineer

Meet the Team The Splunk AI Platform and Services team builds and operates the core runtime and developer infrastructure powering AI across Splunk and Cisco. We run multi-tenant, large-scale LLM inference, VectorDB/RAG, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and AI DevX services across hybrid multi-cloud environments. Sitting at the intersection of Site Reliability Engineering, Distributed Systems, and ML Infrastructure , our mission is to ensure these mission-critical AI workloads remain highly available, scalable, secure, and cost-efficient in production.

About Cisco

Track record designing multi-region high-availability systems, automated remediation, and chaos engineering practices.

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.

Responsibilities

• Operate and optimize multi-tenant LLM inference, model serving, VectorDB/RAG, and MCP platforms across global cloud and GPU clusters.
• Establish and monitor SLOs, SLIs, automated health checks, and observability dashboards (Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, OpenTelemetry).
• Build automation for seamless rollouts, autoscaling, canary deployments, self-healing, and disaster recovery.
• Tune throughput, latency, model scheduling, batching, caching, and resource allocation using Kubernetes, vLLM, and Ray.
• Lead complex production incident response, conduct 5-Why root-cause analyses, and implement systemic remediations to eliminate repeat outages.
• Partner with AI researchers, product developers, and platform teams on production readiness reviews (PRRs) and participate in a sustainable on-call rotation.
• Solid experience running distributed, containerized systems in production using Kubernetes, microservices, and CI/CD .
• Proven background in production operations, distributed troubleshooting, and monitoring stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, or OpenTelemetry).

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in CS/Engineering with 5+ years of relevant experience, or Master’s with 3+ years.
• 3+ years of programming experience in Python, Go, or Java building automation, tooling, or production backend services.
• Hands-on working knowledge of AWS, Azure, or GCP .
• Hands-on experience with vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, Ray Serve, or KServe.
• Experience operating Vector databases, search engines, or distributed cache layers (e.g., Milvus, Pinecone, Redis).
• Familiarity with RAG pipelines, model routing, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and agent runtimes.

Preferred

• Experience managing GPU scheduling, capacity planning, model parallelism, and performance profiling.

Disclaimer

To ensure that we hire the best talent in the right way, we follow a strict hiring process and recently, Cisco has been made aware of fraudulent recruiters claiming to be from the company. Please be advised that any communication from Cisco about careers will: be in direct response to an application you have submitted through the company career site begin with screening or an interview originate from a Cisco email address, and be conducted across email, phone, or WebEx Cisco will never make a job offer without conducting an interview process or ask you for money in any way. If you have been requested to apply for a role or have received an offer from a site other than https://careers.cisco.com or cisco.wd5.myworkday.com , do not provide any personal identifying information, including your Aadhaar or other personal identifying number, birth certificate, banking information, driver's license, or passport. If you are the target of a recruiting scam, consider filing a report with your local law enforcement authorities. Cisco bears no responsibility, and cannot be held liable, for any claims, damages, expenses, or other inconvenience resulting from or in any way connected to recruiting scams.