Solution Engineer - AI at Cisco in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Solution Engineer - AI Location: North Sydney, Australia Location: Must be based in or within a commutable distance to Melbourne, VIC or Sydney, NSW Work Authorization for Australia: Must be authorised to work in Australia without requiring sponsorship now or in the future. Meet the Team Join a dynamic group of AI solution engineers at Cisco who operate at the forefront of cutting-edge AI technologies, including Generative AI and Agentic AI. This role supports the Global Specialist business and is part of a collaborative team spanning the APJC region. Our team rapidly designs and builds innovative Proofs of Concept and Proofs of Value that demonstrate how Cisco’s networking capabilities can solve real-world problems in new, autonomous AI-driven ways. You will collaborate closely with product, data engineering, DevOps, and security teams, applying formal software engineering principles across the full lifecycle - from system design and architecture to deployment and ongoing support. Together, we build scalable, secure, and production-ready AI systems that push the boundaries of enterprise networking. Your Impact Develop and deploy advanced AI workflows and multi-agent systems that drive innovation in networking. Build, fine-tune, and align large language models to create intelligent AI applications like chatbots and automation tools. Implement secure-by-design principles and embed AI-driven security measures throughout the software and model lifecycle. Lead the creation of autonomous agents that plan, reason, and execute complex multi-step tasks. Deliver rapid, tangible business and technical value through Proofs of Concept (PoCs) and Proofs of Value (PoVs). Ensure scalability, reliability, and safety of AI systems in production environments. Influence Cisco’s ability to solve customer challenges with transformative AI solutions. Drive impactful results in a fast-paced, innovative environment by working closely with cross-functional teams. Minimum Qualifications Bachelor’s degree or higher qualification in Computer Science, Software Engineering, IT or a closely related discipline; At least 2 years of relevant experience and/or relevant vendor certification may substitute for the formal qualification (ANZSCO Skill Level 1). Demonstrated experience designing, developing and supporting production software systems using Python and backend development frameworks. Hands-on experience with Large Language Models (e.g. GPT family) and frameworks such as LangChain or LlamaIndex and Lang Graph. Experience designing and implementing APIs, microservices and event-driven software architectures. Experience with vector databases (e.g. Pinecone, FAISS, Weaviate), cloud-native architectures, containerised deployment, Docker, Kubernetes and CI/CD pipelines. Knowledge of data pipelines and ETL processes, with strong analytical, problem-solving and software design skills. Preferred Qualifications Experience architecting Agentic AI and multi-agent orchestration systems, and exposure to MLOps and AI model lifecycle management. Experience training or fine-tuning models at scale with DeepSpeed, PyTorch FSDP or Accelerate on multi-GPU infrastructure. Familiarity with model alignment, evaluation and guardrail tooling, and experiment tracking (Weights & Biases, MLflow). Experience with NLP components, embeddings and semantic search, and with security, governance and compliance in AI systems. Experience building and training models with PyTorch or TensorFlow and the Hugging Face ecosystem (Transformers, Datasets, PEFT, TRL). Practical experience fine-tuning LLMs with parameter-efficient and alignment techniques such as LoRA, QLoRA, SFT and DPO. Prior experience delivering enterprise-grade AI software solutions. 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. Additional Locations: Melbourne, Australia