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About the role
As a Principal Software Engineer for AI Defense, you will serve as the chief technical authority driving the end-to-end security architecture for Cisco's enterprise AI ecosystems. You will architect high-throughput control and data planes that safeguard foundation models, multi-agent frameworks, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool execution from emerging cyber threats. Found on 1752vc Careers, the job board for startup and VC roles.
What they're looking for
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science and 15+ years of relevant software engineering experience, Master’s degree and 12+ years, or Ph.D. and 8+ years building enterprise-scale distributed systems
- 8+ years of hands-on software development experience utilizing Go, Python, or Java to build production microservices, SDKs, and REST/gRPC APIs
- E xperience architecting and operating multi-tenant cloud-native infrastructure on AWS or GCP, including container orchestration with Kubernetes (EKS/GKE) and event-driven data streaming (Kafka/MSK)
- 5+ years of core engineering experience in cybersecurity domains (e.g., cloud security posture management, identity/access governance, RBAC/ABAC, threat modeling, or security analytics)
- E xperience building, debugging, or securing LLM applications, agentic frameworks, or Model Context Protocol (MCP) architectures in production
More about this role
The application window is expected to close on: 11/29/2026
This is a Hybrid role based out of Cisco's San Jose office.
Cisco’s AI Defense team is a fast-growing, elite engineering group dedicated to securing the next generation of enterprise AI platforms, autonomous agents, and foundation models. We build the mission-critical security control and data planes that safeguard Cisco’s AI-native portfolio—including Cloud Control, AI Canvas, and AI Studio—against prompt injection, agent misuse, and data exfiltration. Our team brings together world-class distributed systems engineers, security researchers, and AI practitioners in an agile, high-velocity, and collaborative environment. This is a rare opportunity to define the industry standard for AI security at Cisco’s global enterprise scale.
As a Principal Software Engineer for AI Defense, you will serve as the chief technical authority driving the end-to-end security architecture for Cisco's enterprise AI ecosystems. You will architect high-throughput control and data planes that safeguard foundation models, multi-agent frameworks, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool execution from emerging cyber threats. In this role, you will...
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