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Machine Learning Engineer (Remote) at Cisco in Seattle, WA
Skills
Job Description
Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.
This role can be performed remotely from locations within the United States.
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.
Within Splunk AI, the AI Platform and Services team provides the core runtime and developer experience that power AI across Splunk and Cisco. We run multi-tenant LLM inference on AWS and Azure GPU fleets using vLLM, Bedrock, OpenAI/Azure, and OSS models, and build platform services on top of Splunk’s managed Kubernetes infrastructure. We also provide VectorDB/RAG services and MCP services that make AI workloads secure, observable, and cost-efficient for product teams.
On top of this foundation, we deliver agentic frameworks, SDKs, tools, and evaluation/guardrail capabilities that help teams quickly build reliable GenAI assistants and automation features. You’ll join a group that sits at the intersection of distributed systems, ML, and developer experience, grounded in operational excellence and a culture of impact-driven, cross-functional collaboration.
Your Impact
Implement and maintain features for AI inference services, including vLLM- and Ray-based serving stacks, routing layers, and orchestration services.
Help improve latency, throughput, and cost for LLM and generative workloads by contributing to batching, caching, and other performance optimizations.
Contribute to Kubernetes-native control planes for autoscaling, placement, and capacity management of GPU and CPU workloads across regions and clouds.
Implement and extend platform capabilities such as telemetry, metering & throttling, guardrails, and rollout/rollback, ensuring services are observable and safe by default.
Integrate inference services with VectorDB/RAG, identity & access, networking, and observability stacks under the guidance of more senior engineers.
Participate in code reviews, on-call rotations, and post-incident reviews, helping to drive reliability and operational excellence for the AI Platform.
Collaborate with applied scientists and product teams to produce new models and features on top of the platform.
Minimum Qualifications:
Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
3+ years of hands-on experience building and operating backend or distributed systems in production or 2+ years of experience with Master’s degree
Proficiency in at least one modern programming language (e.g., Python, Go, or Java) and solid foundation in software engineering best practices.
Practical experience with containerization and Kubernetes (e.g., Docker, Helm, basic deployment and service concepts).
Experience designing and implementing REST/gRPC services or microservices, with attention to correctness, robustness, and basic observability (metrics, logs, tracing).
Evidence of end-to-end ownership on projects or services: design participation, implementation, testing, deployment, and production support.
Preferred Qualifications:
Experience working with LLM or ML inference systems or interest in learning frameworks such as vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, or Triton Inference Server.
Familiarity with GPU concepts (CUDA, basic performance considerations) or distributed systems concepts such as sharding, load balancing, and caching.
Exposure to RAG architectures and VectorDB systems (Weaviate, Qdrant, Milvus, FAISS, etc.).
Experience with AWS or Azure cloud services (EC2/VMs, IAM roles, VPC basics) and an understanding of security best practices for cloud workloads.
Background contributing to platforms or shared services used by multiple teams (e.g., internal APIs, SDKs, feature flags, shared libraries).
Experience implementing dashboards, alerts using Prometheus, Skynet, or cloud-native observability tools.
Strong communication skills, willingness to ask questions, and a growth mindset—comfortable learning from senior engineers and progressively taking on more ownership.
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. Simply put – we power the future.
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.
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 in the U.S. and/or Canada:
The starting salary range posted for this position is $165,300.00 to $209,200.00 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 benefits.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:
$181,000.00 - $270,300.00Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:
$165,300.00 - $240,600.00* 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.