Principal Software Engineer, AI Defense (Hybrid)

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 11/29/2026This is a Hybrid role based out of Cisco's San Jose office. MEET THE TEAM Cisco’s AI Defense team is a fast-growing, elite engineering group dedicated to securing the next generation of enterprise AI platforms, autonomous agents, and foundation models. We build the mission-critical security control and data planes that safeguard Cisco’s AI-native portfolio—including Cloud Control, AI Canvas, and AI Studio—against prompt injection, agent misuse, and data exfiltration. Our team brings together world-class distributed systems engineers, security researchers, and AI practitioners in an agile, high-velocity, and collaborative environment. This is a rare opportunity to define the industry standard for AI security at Cisco’s global enterprise scale. YOUR IMPACT As a Principal Software Engineer for AI Defense, you will serve as the chief technical authority driving the end-to-end security architecture for Cisco's enterprise AI ecosystems. You will architect high-throughput control and data planes that safeguard foundation models, multi-agent frameworks, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool execution from emerging cyber threats. In this role, you will balance strategic cross-organizational influence with hands-on systems development, translating complex AI safety research into production-hardened software. Success in this position means establishing resilient, zero-trust security boundaries that empower global enterprises to deploy autonomous AI agents with absolute confidence. You will lead by example—mentoring senior engineers, shaping engineering standards, and defining the future of AI defense at Cisco scale. Architect enterprise AI defense platforms by owning the technical vision and system design for AI Defense control planes, data planes, policy engines, and real-time posture assessment services to safeguard enterprise AI workflows against adversarial attacks. Write and deploy high throughput microservices and APIs in Go and Python to process high-volume telemetry streams under strict latency and reliability SLAs. Harden agentic AI and model security through design runtime guardrails, Model Context Protocol (MCP) policy enforcement, and automated remediation engines to neutralize prompt injection, model jailbreaks, and tool-abuse risks. Drive cross-organizational technical strategy by partnering with Product Management, Security Research, and platform engineering teams across Cisco to establish zero-trust architectures and convert complex customer security requirements into production-ready software. MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS Bachelor’s degree in computer science and 15+ years of relevant software engineering experience, Master’s degree and 12+ years, or Ph.D. and 8+ years building enterprise-scale distributed systems. 8+ years of hands-on software development experience utilizing Go, Python, or Java to build production microservices, SDKs, and REST/gRPC APIs. Experience architecting and operating multi-tenant cloud-native infrastructure on AWS or GCP, including container orchestration with Kubernetes (EKS/GKE) and event-driven data streaming (Kafka/MSK). 5+ years of core engineering experience in cybersecurity domains (e.g., cloud security posture management, identity/access governance, RBAC/ABAC, threat modeling, or security analytics). Experience building, debugging, or securing LLM applications, agentic frameworks, or Model Context Protocol (MCP) architectures in production. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS Expertise in AI safety engineering, including prompt-injection defenses, graph-based security models, runtime model observability, and policy-as-code frameworks. Experience leading greenfield 0-to-1 platform initiatives and executing zero-downtime migrations for high-throughput enterprise SaaS. Experience implementing zero-trust network boundaries, secrets management, service meshes (Envoy/Istio), and automated CI/CD DevSecOps pipelines. Technical mentorship and cross-functional leadership skills with the ability to build consensus across research, engineering, and executive stakeholders. Active contributor to open-source security tools, agent-to-agent communication protocols, or industry AI safety standards. 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 $250,600.00 to $362,600.00 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 e