AI Operations Engineer

About the Role

Cisco is seeking a highly experienced and innovative DevOps Engineer to join our global DevOps team. In this critical role, you will architect and build scalable, secure cloud infrastructure and lead the adoption of best-in-class DevOps practices across the organization. You will work closely with cross-functional teams to ensure seamless code delivery, system reliability, and operational excellence for our SaaS platforms.

Key Responsibilities

• Implement end-to-end CI/CD workflows in a large-scale, distributed environment—enabling both on-demand and scheduled builds and deployments with zero downtime.
• Scale microservice-based platforms across multiple geographic regions, with a focus on container orchestration (Kubernetes), cost optimization, and automated scaling solutions.
• Lead cross-functional DevOps projects from inception to completion defining success criteria, coordinating execution, and measuring outcomes against clear KPIs.
• Collaborate with engineering, QA, and product teams to streamline delivery pipelines and promote DevOps best practices throughout the development lifecycle.
• Advocate automation in every layer of the infrastructure stack using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles and tools such as Terraform, Helm, and GitOps frameworks.
• Continuously evaluate and adopt emerging DevOps tools and technologies to increase system resilience, reduce operational overhead, and enhance developer productivity.
• Integrate AI-assisted tooling, copilots, and AIOps into day-to-day DevOps, CI/CD workflows, infrastructure automation, testing, and incident response to enhance efficiency and system reliability.
• Participate in on-call rotation.
• Serve as a subject matter expert within the DevOps organization—promoting a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automation tools.
• Experience working in Kubernetes, Docker.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Solid scripting and automation skills (e.g., Python, Bash, Go).
• Deep expertise in CI/CD tooling and practices, including hands-on experience with systems like Jenkins, Github, ArgoCD, or similar.
• Demonstrated success scaling containerized microservices across regions with cost and performance optimizations.
• Proven leadership in cross-functional engineering projects with measurable outcomes.

Qualifications

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Engineering (or related field / industry) + 7 years of DevOps experience, Masters + 4 years of related experience, or PhD + 2 years of related experience.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and mentoring skills.