Senior Technical Lead, Software QA - AI and Platform Team

Your Impact As a Quality Assurance Technical Leader for our AI Software & Platform team you will play a vital role in ensuring the quality and reliability of our Generative AI products. Your expertise in designing robust testing frameworks, establishing quality standards, and driving automation strategies across service boundaries will be essential for the success of our product. As a key leader of our team, you will be responsible for defining and implementing quality assurance strategies for our Generative AI products. Your role will involve understanding the operations of each AI service, designing comprehensive testing processes that validate their seamless integration, and ensuring the appropriate tools and metrics are in place. Your work will be instrumental in delivering a high-quality and dependable solution to our customers. Design and develop comprehensive test plans and strategies for complex, large-scale AI-driven features and systems. Address unique challenges in building effective test strategies for enterprise-grade AI platforms and software applications. Collaborate closely with multi-functional teams, including data scientists, machine learning engineers, and software developers, to achieve shared quality objectives. Design, implement, and continuously improve test automation frameworks for AI pipelines, APIs, and user interfaces to enhance QA team productivity and efficiency. Develop and maintain test automation tools for validating both AI models (e.g., model performance, accuracy, and robustness) and platform components (e.g., backend systems and UI). Define, develop, and manage complex test environments, including datasets and model versions, to support diverse AI testing scenarios. Enhance test automation frameworks to ensure they are developer-friendly, robust, and scalable, with support for detailed reporting, easy debugging, and seamless integration with CI/CD pipelines, test case management systems and bug tracking systems. Contribute to product decisions by providing insights into the quality of AI models, data integrity, and platform stability, influencing the development of cutting-edge AI solutions. Analyze complex issues, such as model performance degradation or system failures, and lead root cause analysis to improve reliability. Partner with engineering, product management, UX, documentation, DevOps, and customer engineering teams throughout the product lifecycle, from requirements capturing to release. Define and implement processes to capture customer feedback and build feedback loops to improve AI model quality, data accuracy, and platform user satisfaction. Set a strong example of quality-first practices and technical excellence in testing AI systems and platforms. Mentor and coach junior QA team members, emphasizing AI testing best practices, fostering accountability, and promoting continuous learning. Demonstrate effective communication skills in multi-functional interactions, ensuring clarity when discussing AI testing challenges and quality outcomes. Minimum Qualifications: A minimum of 10 years of experience in QA roles, with a focus on enterprise-scale systems or high-growth environments. Proficiency in Python programming, with expertise in additional languages considered an advantage. Familiarity with and ability to adapt to modern tools and frameworks such as Pytest, Playwright, Selenium or similar. Practical experience using backend and frontend testing frameworks, with a passion for improving test automation coverage and infrastructure. Strong diagnostic and debugging abilities, paired with experience in creating and maintaining automation pipelines and test utilities. Demonstrated success in collaborating with cross-functional teams to address issues, implement solutions, and ensure quality deliverables. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with a team-oriented approach and a commitment to ownership and accountability. Bachelor’s or master’s degree or equivalent experience in computer science or a related field is required. Preferred Qualifications: Bachelor’s or master’s degree or equivalent experience in computer science Prior experience working with generative AI technologies or AI/ML platforms Consistent track record in leading quality assurance efforts for distributed systems and cloud-based SaaS products. Experience designing and building advanced test frameworks from the ground up, prioritizing scalability and performance. Deep knowledge of test strategy development for complex systems, especially large-scale AI/ML or platform-based solutions. Knowledge of compliance standards. #WeAreCisco #WeAreCisco where every individual brings their unique skills and perspectives together to pursue our purpose of powering an inclusive future for all. Our passion is connection—we celebrate our employees’ diverse set of backgrounds and focus on unlocking potential. Cisconians often experience one company, many careers where learning and development are encouraged and supported at every stage. Our technology, tools, and culture pioneered hybrid work trends, allowing all to not only give their best, but be their best. We understand our outstanding opportunity to bring communities together and at the heart of that is our people. One-third of Cisconians collaborate in our 30 employee resource organizations, called Inclusive Communities, to connect, foster belonging, learn to be informed allies, and make a difference. Dedicated paid time off to volunteer—80 hours each year—allows us to give back to causes we are passionate about, and nearly 86% do! Our purpose, driven by our people, is what makes us the worldwide leader in technology that powers the internet. Helping our customers reimagine their applications, secure their enterprise, transform their infrastructure, and meet their sustainability goals is what we do best. We ensure that every step we take is a step towards a more inclusive future for all. Take your next step and be you, with us! #ciscoAIJobs Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada: When available, the salary range posted for this position reflects the projected hiring range for new hire, full-time salaries in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including equity or benefits. For non-sales roles the hiring ranges reflect base salary only; employees are also eligible to receive annual bonuses. Hiring ranges for sales positions include base and incentive compensation target. Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location and additional factors, including but not limited to skillset, experience, and relevant education, certifications, or training. Applicants may not be eligible for the full salary range based on their U.S. or Canada hiring location. The recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process. U.S. employees have access to quality medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance and numerous wellbeing offerings. Employees receive up to twelve paid holidays per calendar year, which includes one floating holiday (for non-exempt employees), plus a day off for their birthday. Non-Exempt new hires accrue up to 16 days of vacation time off each year, at a rate of 4.92 hours per pay period. Exempt new hires participate in Cisco’s flexible Vacation Time Off policy, which does not place a defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use, but is subject to availability and some business limitations. All new hires are eligible for Sick Time Off subject to Cisco’s Sick Time Off Policy and will have eighty (80) hours of sick time off provided on their hire date and on January 1st of each year thereafter. Up to 80 hours of unused sick time will be carried forward from one calendar year to the next such that the maximum number of sick time hours an employee may have available is 160 hours. Employees in Illinois have a unique time off program designed specifically with local requirements in mind. All employees also have access to paid time away to deal with critical or emergency issues. We offer additional paid time to volunteer and give back to the community. Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components. 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 up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.