Cisco
AI Security Research Engineer
RTP, North Carolina, US · Full-time
Sponsorship not specified$167k-$211kDetected 12 hours ago
PythonGoRustC++Machine LearningLLMsRAGCybersecurityCiscoResearchLeadershipPublic Speaking
About the role
- it defines what secure AI looks like, validates that Cisco meets it, and helps teams get there faster, including by using AI for security itself.
Responsibilities
- Leads strategic AI security initiatives and roadmaps with manageable-to-significant complexity (e.g., six-month to one-year plans) across the team's three pillars: securing AI-assisted development, securing AI in products, and securing AI in how we run the business.
- Influences product organizations and partners across S&TO, setting the security bar while partners build and run.
- Owns secure AI architecture patterns and prohibited design patterns for AI-native features (RAG, tool use, multi-agent workflows, MCP (Model Context Protocol) integrations), including prompts, context, retrieval, model selection, and output handling.
- Drives the model and data supply-chain security strategy, including model provenance and data protection requirements such as classification, minimization, residency, and sensitive data handling.
- Owns reusable platform contributions and architecture (security tooling and agentic workflows) that scale enablement across engineering rather than blocking it.
- develops hypotheses, designs experiments and prototypes, and turns discovery into shipped controls.
- Monitors and evaluates emerging AI technologies, attacker techniques, and adversarial research; develops hypotheses, designs experiments and prototypes, and turns discovery into shipped controls.
- Independently develops and delivers presentations; leads cross-functional working sessions with diverse audiences and creates clear ownership models with partner teams.
- Leads creation of research artifacts (threat research, patterns, proposals, patents) of scientific quality and rigor; shares in company and industry forums.
Requirements
- Bachelor's + 7 years of related experience, or Master's + 4 years of related experience, or PhD + 1 year of related experience.
- Demonstrated depth in AI/ML security and hands-on security engineering, with a track record of leading initiatives and influencing cross-functional teams.
- Proficiency in Python
- ability to read and review code fluently across multiple languages.
Nice to have
- Proven leadership of AI red-team engagements and evaluation programs
- familiarity with Cisco AI Defense (Cisco's AI security solution) or an open-source framework such as NVIDIA's Garak.
- Deep command of LLM and agentic-system security: prompt injection (direct and indirect), jailbreaking, insecure output handling, RAG hardening, tool-call governance, and multi-agent trust boundaries.
- Experience authoring security standards or baselines and embedding them into a secure SDLC and CI/CD.
- Authority with OWASP LLM/Agentic Top 10, MITRE ATLAS, NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, and the EU AI Act, with the judgment to apply them proportionately by risk tier.
- Experience shipping or integrating agentic and MCP (Model Context Protocol) systems and AI development tooling (Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot).
- Experience with Go, Rust, or C/C++ is a plus, with C/C++ valuable for Cisco's embedded and networking products.
- Recognized external contributions, such as published threat research, conference talks, open-source security tooling, or patents.
Compensation
- The starting salary range posted for this position is $167,000.00 to $211,400.00 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 benef
Benefits
- 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.
- 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
- Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training.
This listing is sourced directly from Cisco's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.