About this role
Cisco’s Infrastructure & Security CTO organization seeks a Principal Engineer to embed AI and security into core networking and security products. Based in Bangalore, India, this is a hybrid, full-time role with a stated 40-hour workweek. The position focuses on improving threat detection, secure access and operational automation through LLMs, Zero Trust security and cloud-native systems.
Responsibilities
- Integrate AI/ML and LLMs into platforms for threat detection, anomaly analysis and intelligent policy enforcement. Design security-first architectures covering firewalls, Zero Trust and secure access, and runtime security such as Tetragon or eBPF.
- Build cloud-native platform capabilities across Kubernetes and multi-cloud environments. Develop large-scale telemetry, data pipelines and real-time inference systems for AI-driven insights.
- Address the AI security lifecycle, including model and data protection, access control and runtime enforcement. Lead work from architecture through production, including hands-on design and critical-path development.
- Collaborate with product teams on customer-facing innovation and monetization opportunities, and mentor colleagues across security, AI and platform engineering.
Minimum qualifications:
- At least 12 years in platform engineering, distributed systems or security architecture. The job title states “13+ years,” while the minimum qualifications specify 12+ years.
- Strong network and cloud security expertise, including firewalls, Zero Trust and secure access, plus cloud-native systems experience with Kubernetes and microservices. Experience with cloud-native security tools such as Tetragon, eBPF or similar is required.
- Hands-on production experience building, deploying and scaling LLM/AI applications for security use cases; experience building large-scale telemetry- and data-driven platforms; and strong C/C++, Go and/or Java programming skills, with Python for AI integration and automation.
Preferred qualifications include applying AI to security or networking platforms at scale; deep knowledge of Zero Trust, SSE/SASE and identity-driven architectures; experience with AWS, Azure or GCP; a product mindset that connects platform innovation to business outcomes; and a record of driving cross-functional initiatives from concept to production.