AI Engineer Jobs in USA with Visa Sponsorship
AI engineers who specialize in taking models from research prototypes to production-grade systems are in surging demand across US companies scaling their AI capabilities. Unlike research-focused roles, AI engineering emphasizes MLOps, model serving, and building reliable inference pipelines - skills that are scarce and highly valued by employers filing sponsorship petitions. If you can bridge the gap between a trained model and a product that serves millions of users, US companies will sponsor your visa to do exactly that. For detailed occupation requirements, see the O*NET profile.
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Get Access To All JobsINTRODUCTION
The application window is expected to close on: 08/14/2026. Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.
Meet the Team
At Foundation AI, we are leading frontier AI research across Cisco. Our mission is to advance the state of artificial intelligence through fundamental research and translate scientific breakthroughs into differentiated technologies that power the next generation of enterprise AI.
Our research spans foundation models, agentic AI, multimodal learning, reasoning systems, scalable training algorithms, evaluation science, inference optimization, and AI systems infrastructure. We work at the intersection of cutting-edge research and real-world impact, developing technologies that influence Cisco's AI strategy while contributing meaningfully to the broader AI research community.
We believe impactful research should advance both science and products. Our researchers publish at top AI conferences, contribute to open-source projects, collaborate with leading academic institutions, and build production systems that solve challenging enterprise-scale problems.
Your Impact
As a Senior AI Researcher you will operate as a visionary technical leader, architecting and executing frontier AI research that dictates Foundation AI's long-term technical trajectory.
You will identify emerging research opportunities, formulate original research hypotheses, and lead ambitious research programs spanning foundation models, agentic AI, reasoning, multimodal learning, and large-scale AI systems. Working closely with engineering and product team members, you will translate scientific advances into scalable technologies that differentiate Cisco's AI platform.
Working at the highest technical levels, you will translate scientific advances into scalable paradigms that fundamentally differentiate Cisco's AI platform. Beyond individual technical contributions, you will provide scientific leadership across multiple research initiatives, mentor junior researchers and interns, and influence executive technical strategy. You will represent Cisco externally through top-tier publications, open-source leadership, and active collaboration with the global AI research community.
In this role, you will
- Define and direct multi-year research programs aligned with Foundation AI's strategic priorities, setting the technical bar and research methodology for the wider team.
- Invent and pioneer novel architectures and algorithms for foundation model training and inference, complex reasoning agentic AI systems, and multimodal learning.
- Drive frontier research in advanced domains such as reinforcement learning, mechanistic interpretability, and scaling laws, with applications to the cybersecurity domain.
- Design and build new evaluation benchmarks and frameworks that improve the reliability, transparency and safety of AI models.
- Collaborate across research, engineering, product, and security teams to translate research into production AI systems and drive the adoption of the new research across Cisco's AI portfolio.
- Mentor researchers, engineers and interns, elevating the team's scientific rigor and engineering excellence through code reviews, paper reviews, and architectural guidance.
- Publish research in top AI conferences and journals, contribute to open-source AI projects, and represent Cisco through invited talks and technical collaborations.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
- PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related technical field, plus 5+ years of relevant research experience, or equivalent demonstrated research impact.
- Demonstrated track record of sustained, high-impact publications at top-tier machine learning and AI conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, CVPR, ICCV, or equivalent venues).
- Deep expertise in foundation models, post-training and alignment, LLMs, agentic AI, reinforcement learning, reasoning, efficient inference, or distributed training systems.
- Expert-level proficiency in Python, PyTorch, distributed machine learning, and modern AI research frameworks.
- Proven ability to lead complex, ambiguous technical projects from conception to deployment as an individual contributor.
- Exceptional ability to communicate complex scientific concepts to both highly technical peers and non-technical executive stakeholders.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Hands-on expertise in high-performance computing environments, with a track record of leading distributed training across thousands of GPUs using frameworks and communication primitives such as CUDA, NCCL, FSDP2, and Megatron-LM.
- Experience deploying high-performance inference engines such as vLLM and SGLang, and working with cloud-native deployment, Docker, Kubernetes, MLOps pipelines, and major cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
- Experience designing and scaling agentic AI workflows, multi-agent frameworks, and autonomous AI systems.
- Familiarity with cybersecurity principles, AI systems for security-focused use cases, safety, and robust machine learning.
- Demonstrated leadership within the global AI research community, specifically serving as an Area Chair or senior program committee member for top-tier AI conferences.
Why Cisco?
At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint.
Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere.
We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.
COMPENSATION
The starting salary range posted for this position is $212,300.00 to $275,800.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including incentive compensation*, equity, or benefits.
Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.
U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks. Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.
U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:
- 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees
- 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco
- Non-exempt employees** receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees
- Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)
- 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to the next
- Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members
- Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer
For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.
Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan. 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 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.
The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:
New York City Metro Area:
$212,300.00 - $317,100.00
Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:
$193,800.00 - $282,100.00
- For quota-based sales roles on Cisco’s sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.
Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.
INTRODUCTION
The application window is expected to close on: 08/14/2026. Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.
Meet the Team
At Foundation AI, we are leading frontier AI research across Cisco. Our mission is to advance the state of artificial intelligence through fundamental research and translate scientific breakthroughs into differentiated technologies that power the next generation of enterprise AI.
Our research spans foundation models, agentic AI, multimodal learning, reasoning systems, scalable training algorithms, evaluation science, inference optimization, and AI systems infrastructure. We work at the intersection of cutting-edge research and real-world impact, developing technologies that influence Cisco's AI strategy while contributing meaningfully to the broader AI research community.
We believe impactful research should advance both science and products. Our researchers publish at top AI conferences, contribute to open-source projects, collaborate with leading academic institutions, and build production systems that solve challenging enterprise-scale problems.
Your Impact
As a Senior AI Researcher you will operate as a visionary technical leader, architecting and executing frontier AI research that dictates Foundation AI's long-term technical trajectory.
You will identify emerging research opportunities, formulate original research hypotheses, and lead ambitious research programs spanning foundation models, agentic AI, reasoning, multimodal learning, and large-scale AI systems. Working closely with engineering and product team members, you will translate scientific advances into scalable technologies that differentiate Cisco's AI platform.
Working at the highest technical levels, you will translate scientific advances into scalable paradigms that fundamentally differentiate Cisco's AI platform. Beyond individual technical contributions, you will provide scientific leadership across multiple research initiatives, mentor junior researchers and interns, and influence executive technical strategy. You will represent Cisco externally through top-tier publications, open-source leadership, and active collaboration with the global AI research community.
In this role, you will
- Define and direct multi-year research programs aligned with Foundation AI's strategic priorities, setting the technical bar and research methodology for the wider team.
- Invent and pioneer novel architectures and algorithms for foundation model training and inference, complex reasoning agentic AI systems, and multimodal learning.
- Drive frontier research in advanced domains such as reinforcement learning, mechanistic interpretability, and scaling laws, with applications to the cybersecurity domain.
- Design and build new evaluation benchmarks and frameworks that improve the reliability, transparency and safety of AI models.
- Collaborate across research, engineering, product, and security teams to translate research into production AI systems and drive the adoption of the new research across Cisco's AI portfolio.
- Mentor researchers, engineers and interns, elevating the team's scientific rigor and engineering excellence through code reviews, paper reviews, and architectural guidance.
- Publish research in top AI conferences and journals, contribute to open-source AI projects, and represent Cisco through invited talks and technical collaborations.
MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
- PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related technical field, plus 5+ years of relevant research experience, or equivalent demonstrated research impact.
- Demonstrated track record of sustained, high-impact publications at top-tier machine learning and AI conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, CVPR, ICCV, or equivalent venues).
- Deep expertise in foundation models, post-training and alignment, LLMs, agentic AI, reinforcement learning, reasoning, efficient inference, or distributed training systems.
- Expert-level proficiency in Python, PyTorch, distributed machine learning, and modern AI research frameworks.
- Proven ability to lead complex, ambiguous technical projects from conception to deployment as an individual contributor.
- Exceptional ability to communicate complex scientific concepts to both highly technical peers and non-technical executive stakeholders.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Hands-on expertise in high-performance computing environments, with a track record of leading distributed training across thousands of GPUs using frameworks and communication primitives such as CUDA, NCCL, FSDP2, and Megatron-LM.
- Experience deploying high-performance inference engines such as vLLM and SGLang, and working with cloud-native deployment, Docker, Kubernetes, MLOps pipelines, and major cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
- Experience designing and scaling agentic AI workflows, multi-agent frameworks, and autonomous AI systems.
- Familiarity with cybersecurity principles, AI systems for security-focused use cases, safety, and robust machine learning.
- Demonstrated leadership within the global AI research community, specifically serving as an Area Chair or senior program committee member for top-tier AI conferences.
Why Cisco?
At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint.
Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere.
We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.
COMPENSATION
The starting salary range posted for this position is $212,300.00 to $275,800.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including incentive compensation*, equity, or benefits.
Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.
U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks. Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.
U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:
- 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees
- 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco
- Non-exempt employees** receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees
- Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)
- 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to the next
- Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members
- Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer
For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.
Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan. 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 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.
The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:
New York City Metro Area:
$212,300.00 - $317,100.00
Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:
$193,800.00 - $282,100.00
- For quota-based sales roles on Cisco’s sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.
Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.
See all 7,189+ AI Engineer Jobs
Sign up for free to unlock all listings, filter by visa type, and get alerts for new AI Engineer roles.
Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding Visa Sponsorship as an AI Engineer
Position yourself at the intersection of AI and engineering
AI Engineer is a fast-growing title that bridges ML research and production software. Highlight experience deploying models, building RAG pipelines, or integrating LLMs into products - these applied skills are what companies are hiring for.
Target companies actively building AI engineering teams
Companies from startups to enterprises are creating new AI engineering roles and sponsoring H-1B petitions to fill them. Databricks, Notion, Figma, and similar companies have expanded AI headcount specifically because demand outpaces domestic supply.
Clarify your SOC code with your employer
AI Engineer roles can file under SOC 15-1252 (Software Developers) if engineering-focused or 15-2051 (Data Scientists) if research-heavy. The right choice depends on your day-to-day duties - work with your employer's immigration attorney to match accurately.
Use STEM OPT to build production AI experience
A STEM-eligible degree gives you up to 3 years of work authorization through OPT. Ship real AI features during that time - companies are far more likely to sponsor an engineer who already knows their codebase and deployment stack.
Differentiate yourself with full-stack AI skills
Many AI engineers can fine-tune models but struggle with production infrastructure. Expertise in model serving, API design, latency optimization, and monitoring makes you harder to replace and gives employers a stronger reason to sponsor.
Consider the O-1 path if you have notable AI work
Significant open-source contributions, widely used AI tools, or media coverage of your work can support an O-1 extraordinary ability petition. You don't need a PhD - demonstrated impact in applied AI can qualify.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between an AI engineer and a machine learning engineer for visa sponsorship purposes?
For immigration purposes, the distinction matters less than how the employer describes the role in the petition. AI engineer roles tend to emphasize building end-to-end AI-powered products, integrating LLMs, and designing retrieval-augmented generation systems. ML engineer roles focus more on model training infrastructure and serving pipelines. Both qualify as specialty occupations, and the key is specificity in the job description listing the technical skills required and the degree fields that prepare someone for the work.
How important is production experience versus research experience for AI engineer visa sponsorship?
Production experience is the differentiator for AI engineering roles. Employers sponsoring AI engineers are specifically looking for someone who can deploy and maintain AI systems in production, handling model versioning, building evaluation frameworks, and optimizing inference costs. While research experience shows technical depth, the visa petition for an AI engineer role will emphasize production engineering requirements. Highlight systems you have built and shipped, along with experience in tools like Kubernetes, Docker, and model serving frameworks.
Do I need a master's degree or PhD to get sponsored as an AI engineer?
A bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field is sufficient for most AI engineering positions. Unlike AI research roles where a PhD is often expected, AI engineering emphasizes practical systems-building skills over academic credentials. That said, a master's degree qualifies you for the additional 20,000 H-1B lottery slots reserved for advanced degree holders and signals deeper technical knowledge. Many successful AI engineer petitions are filed with bachelor's-level candidates who have strong production ML experience.
Which companies are most actively sponsoring AI engineers?
Companies scaling AI products are the most active sponsors. This includes large tech firms (Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft), AI-first startups (OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere), and AI infrastructure companies (Databricks, Anyscale, Weights & Biases). Enterprise companies integrating AI into their products across healthcare, finance, and e-commerce are also growing sponsors. Look for employers whose job descriptions specifically mention LLM integration, RAG systems, or production AI deployment, as these roles are distinct enough to produce strong petitions.
What technical skills should I emphasize in an AI engineer visa petition?
Focus on skills that distinguish AI engineering from general software development. LLM integration, vector database management, prompt engineering pipelines, inference optimization, and retrieval-augmented generation architecture are the most relevant. Experience with evaluation frameworks for AI systems, cost optimization for GPU workloads, and monitoring for model quality in production also carries weight. The more specific the technical requirements in the petition, the stronger the specialty occupation argument.
What is the prevailing wage requirement for sponsored AI Engineer jobs?
When a U.S. employer sponsors a foreign worker for a work visa, they are legally required to pay at least the "prevailing wage", the average wage paid to workers in the same occupation, in the same geographic area, with similar experience. This is set by the Department of Labor to prevent employers from hiring foreign workers at below-market rates. The prevailing wage varies significantly by role, location, and experience level. For example, a ai engineer in California will have a different prevailing wage than the same role in a smaller state. You can look up current prevailing wage rates for any occupation and location using the OFLC Wage Search Page.
How to find AI Engineer jobs with visa sponsorship?
To find AI Engineer jobs with visa sponsorship, use Migrate Mate, which specializes in connecting international tech talent with sponsoring employers. Focus on tech companies, startups, and research institutions that commonly sponsor H-1B, O-1 visa, or TN visas for AI roles. These employers actively seek machine learning engineers, data scientists, and AI researchers with specialized skills in neural networks, computer vision, and natural language processing.