Senior Machine Learning Engineer, NLP

Company: Cisco Systems, Inc.
Location: San Jose
Posted on: May 25, 2025

Job Description:

The application window is expected to close on: August 14, 2025. Meet the Team Cisco Webex is the world's #1 business collaboration and customer engagement platform. It is used across all industries in the world being used to support governments, business, education, and more, including use by 85% of Fortune 500 business. The workplace of the future will be powered by AI, and we, Collaboration AI, is the team responsible for building AI/ML intelligent experiences within Cisco's Webex portfolio. The team is made up of multiple major AI fronts to enrich the collaboration use cases. This, in the order of processing pipeline, includes audio codec technologies, automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), natural language processing (NLP) using and training LLMs and beyond, and gen-AI evaluation methodologies, both metric-based and subjective testing. In addition, videos are empowered via computer vision (CV) and additional contextual information by employee graphs, and much more. We aim to build the next-generation AI solutions in collaboration software, devices, and APIs - from digitizing the in-meeting experience, enhancing distributed team efficiency and improving all aspects of people connection. What You'll Do As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer on the Collaboration AI team, you will innovate NLP/LLM solutions for Webex products. You are expected to be a main contributor in our AI technology space and bridge the gap between the fast evolving open-source AI landscape and the Webex user experience. You'll drive technological advancement while bridging cutting-edge AI developments with practical user experiences. Your responsibility will include, but not limited to, the following: Explore and implement next-gen LLM technologies, focusing on retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), AI agents, reasoning models, reinforcement learning for LLMs, and more. Fast prototype innovative concepts and create viable paths to production. Conduct applied ML research and follow the systematic methodology: Establish benchmarking methods, evaluate against baselines, perform ablation studies, and deliver actionable recommendations. Balance technical trade-offs to determine optimal production solutions Collaborate with system engineers, product managers, and client teams to drive productization Level up the team's AI/ML savviness as an AI knowledge catalyst. Who You'll Work With You'll join a small, high-caliber team of ML specialists, large scale systems pros, NLP, Speech, and CV practitioners and researchers, product gurus, customer artiste, and world-class designers who are all low ego and humble, and passionate about the future brought by AI. We adapt quickly, continuously improve, and deliver high-impact results. We're not only aiming to build AI applications; we strive to build the best applications of AI the world has ever seen. Many of our engineers have founded their own startups prior to forming Collaboration AI, and they bring a wide and diverse set of industry experience and expertise with them. We draw on this well of experiences every day as we collaborate on our own product, tech stack, and go to market strategy. We're highly collaborative, committed to building great things, and consider it a privilege to learn from each other every day. Minimum Requirements M.S. in Computer Science, Mathematics, or STEM. 3+ years of experience with Natural Language Processing 2+ years of experience implementing LLM technologies, systems, and applications Experience with deep learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, JAX, Keras, TensorFlow), ML ecosystems (e.g., Hugging Face) and production Python programming skills Experience with Research in NLP domain Preferred Requirements Ph.D. in Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related field. 5+ years of experience with Natural Language Processing 3+ years of experience implementing LLM technologies, systems, and applications Proven track record of developing novel NLP/LLM algorithms that solve real-world challenges with measurable results Experience in reasoning models and reinforcement learning for LLMs is a plus. Demonstrated intellectual curiosity with a consistent pattern of surveying, experimenting with, and incorporating emerging AI research and technologies into practical solutions Strong judgment to assess practical value versus industry hype Demonstrated persistence in problem-solving complex challenges Engineering mentality at heart Research contributions in NLP (publications, patents, presentations) are a plus #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.

Keywords: Cisco Systems, Inc., Berkeley , Senior Machine Learning Engineer, NLP, Engineering , San Jose, California