Outshift by Cisco is the emerging tech incubation group that explores, identifies, and creates new businesses for Cisco. We are passionate about being at the cutting edge of technology, taking Cisco into new markets and building exciting products that solve tomorrow's biggest challenges.

Like a startup, we take an entrepreneurial approach to success. We incubate ideas into products that solve critical needs, then deliver an experience that delights users and customers from MVP to full-blown commercial offering.

Outshift is about innovation. We look from 12 months out to five years into the future, flexibly working to solve problems instead of fitting into a defined job description. We celebrate learning, and expect our teams to fail fast, challenging assumptions and finding new ways of solving problems. Outshifters enjoy gaining experience across a breadth of technological and business challenges and can expect to shift across products/problems and build new skills regularly.

We're building the next wave of startup-like innovation with the support of a trusted name like Cisco. Where else will you get to do this? Come create with us.

Who You'll Work With

The Outshift team is highly visible within Cisco as it's leading the future innovation for the business. As part of the Strategy, Incubations & Applications group led by Cisco's Chief Strategy Officer, you'll be working with some of the organization's most forward thinkers.

In this role, you can expect to collaborate with multi-functional teams including product managers, applied scientists, and senior engineers that are like - minded in an incubation setting.

You are a "roll up your sleeves" hands-on leader that is characterized by both your adaptability and resilience. You thrive in fast-paced settings that demand innovation and creativity, where the freedom to experiment is matched by the understanding that failure is a steppingstone to success. Your revolutionary spirit fuels your ability to embrace risk and uncertainty, and when faced with setbacks, you demonstrate the tenacity to dust yourself off and dive back into the fray with renewed vigor. This relentless pursuit of breakthroughs, coupled with a collaborative and detail-oriented approach to problem-solving, positions you as a dynamic force within any team, driving forward the advancement of machine learning and generative AI with passion and perseverance.

In this leadership role, you will also be a hands-on contributor and instrumental in driving, applying, and advancing powerful AI technologies within products that deliver real business value. You and your team will craft the latest AI-powered user experiences across diverse platforms, working in sync with a dedicated generative AI product management team. This role offers the opportunity to build on your expertise in the most sought-after AI domains, positioning you at the forefront of Cisco's AI strategies for the coming decade. In addition, you will engage in cross-team collaborations within Cisco, promoting a unified AI strategy throughout the company. Your responsibilities will include:

• Design and develop end-to-end products to enable easy adoption of generative AI for enterprises.
• Design and build services and integrations for ML pipelines for LLM fine-tuning, prompt tuning and engineering, Benchmarking and RAG for various generative AI models.
• Collaborate with multi-functional teams including product managers, applied scientists, and other engineers and identify and implement the most effective system design and solutions.
• Lead and mentor a team of Machine Learning Engineers.
• Stay up to date with the latest advancements in the field of AI and apply them to develop cutting- edge solutions.

• Bachelors degree and 12 years of Engineering exp OR Masters degree and 8 years of Engineering exp OR PhD and 5 years of Engineering experience.
• 3 years in a leadership role leading a team of software engineers, ML engineers, and architects.
• Experience with building and maintaining ML pipelines.
• Documented experience with the infrastructure required for the development and implementation of Large Language Models (LLMs), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Computer Vision, Image Processing, or various generative AI techniques.
• Proven experience programming languages commonly used in AI and ML development such as Python, Java, or C .

• Strong leadership, influencing and mentoring skills.
• Equally comfortable and capable interacting with technologists as with business executives.
• Experience with AI and ML frameworks and libraries (such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, Keras).
• Understanding of software development best practices, including version control (such as Git), continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD), and testing methodologies.
• Experience with fine-tuning, prompt tuning, benchmarking, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).

Why Cisco?

#WeAreCisco. We are all unique, but collectively we bring our talents to work as a team, to develop innovative technology and power a more inclusive, digital future for everyone. How do we do it? Well, for starters - with people like you!

Nearly every internet connection around the world touches Cisco. We're the Internet's optimists. Our technology makes sure the data traveling at light speed across connections does so securely, yet it's not what we make but what we make happen which marks us out. We're helping those who work in the health service to connect with patients and each other; schools, colleges, and universities to teach in even the most challenging of times. We're helping businesses of all shapes and sizes to connect with their employees and customers in new ways, providing people with access to the digital skills they need and connecting the most remote parts of the world - whether through 5G, or otherwise.

We tackle whatever challenges come our way. We have each other's backs, we recognize our accomplishments, and we grow together. We celebrate and support one another - from big and small things in life to big career moments. And giving back is in our DNA (we get 10 days off each year to do just that).

We know that powering an inclusive future starts with us. Because without diversity and a dedication to equality, there is no moving forward. Our 30 Inclusive Communities, that bring people together around commonalities or passions, are leading the way. Together we're committed to learning, listening, caring for our communities, whilst supporting the most vulnerable with a collective effort to make this world a better place either with technology, or through our actions.

So, you have colorful hair? Don't care. Tattoos? Show off your ink. Like polka dots? That's cool. Pop culture geek? Many of us are. Passion for technology and world changing? Be you, with us! #WeAreCisco