Hiring: AI Researcher Company: Cisco Location: Seattle, WA Job Posted Time: 2026-09-09 17:59:25 Employment Type: Full-time Target Skills & Keywords: AI Research, Small Language Models (SLMs), Reinforcement Learning, Agent Simulation, Post-Training Methods, LoRA, QLoRA, PEFT, Instruction Tuning, SFT, RLHF, PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, Hugging Face Transformers, RAG, Model Evaluation, NeuralFabric Experience: - PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field with 5+ years of experience in applied AI/ML research or engineering. - Experience independently designing, training, and fine-tuning language models for production or applied research use. - Track record of leading applied AI projects from research through production deployment, with documented outcomes across more than one domain or problem. Required Skills: - Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, or Hugging Face Transformers. - Experience with advanced post-training methods such as LoRA, QLoRA, PEFT, instruction tuning, supervised fine-tuning, or reinforcement learning from human or AI feedback. - Ability to design, train, and fine-tune Small Language Models for network, security, observability, and operations problems. - Experience advancing reinforcement learning, Auto Gym, and agent-simulation methods and turning them into reusable training and evaluation recipes. - Ability to define evaluation methods and promotion gates to make model quality measurable and repeatable. - Stay current with LLMs, SLMs, multi-modal models, and agents and apply research to internal and customer use cases. Qualifications: - PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field. - Publications in top AI conferences such as ACL, EMNLP, ICLR, ICML, NAACL, or NeurIPS preferred. - Experience with Small Language Models, efficient architectures, model compression, reinforcement learning, gym-style training environments, or agent evaluation harnesses preferred. - Familiarity with networking, cybersecurity, observability, or IT operations domains preferred. - Experience with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), advanced evaluation methodologies, and model promotion or lineage gates preferred. - Ability to work closely with other AI researchers and engineers, explain technical work, and collaborate with business-unit or customer partners. Compensation: Not specified in the job posting. Interested candidates, please apply directly through the job posting on company's career page or try via AI auto apply on this platform. Don’t miss this opportunity to join a forward-thinking team!