Meet the Team The post-pandemic years have exposed inherent biases and limitations in human-driven and statistical/Traditional ML-based forecasting approaches. Cisco wasn’t immune and saw a sharp increase in backlogs, inventory levels, and supply chain costs. The Forecasting Data Science Team within Global Planning is solving this by using Causal AI to redefine Demand Forecasting and its Enterprise impact. We’re working to provide breakthrough levels of regime-resilient forecast accuracy, efficiency, and prescriptive insights that enable decision makers across Cisco and its Supply Chain to plan effectively. We are a bright, engaged, and friendly distributed team working with an industry-leading Causal AI ecosystem. Gartner has ranked Cisco’s Supply Chain to be 1 or 2 in the world over the last 5 years, and recognized this team in their Power of Profession 2024 Supply Chain awards as one of the top 5 in the Process and Technology Innovation category. Your Impact You will bring your skills, experience, and innovation to play a significant role in shaping our Causal AI-based forecasting system to improve decision making and drive operational performance and efficiency across Cisco’s Enterprise and Supply Chain functions. You Will Develop, evolve, and sustain key elements of the Causal-AI based Forecasting system for Aggregated Demand. Analyze and sharpen the causal consideration of global financial markets, macro-economics, micro-economic and competitive factors in the Demand Forecasting models. Engineer model features from broad internal and external structured and unstructured datasets, discover and improve the natural segmentation for Demand based on these factors, determine causality of the factors, and incorporate them into structural causal models. Develop high-quality, accurate models that are robust and have a long shelf life. Solve complicated research problems that push the boundaries of structural causal modelling and scale to Enterprise and Supply Chain business applications. Work closely with business leads and experts in Global Planning, other Supply Chain functions, Finance, and other Cisco organizations to understand relationships and patterns driving Cisco demand. Develop and evolve reliable approaches for uncertainty quantification to enable scenario/range forecasts Research and develop new methods to reconcile between forecasts at multiple product hierarchy levels, multiple time horizons, and different forecasting approaches. Leverage and incorporate appropriate machine learning approaches including customization of recently published research as needed to build better Causal AI solutions. Provide technical direction and mentoring to junior data scientists and data engineers in the team, helping shape the skills and values of the next generation of Cisco data scientists. Minimum Qualifications 6 years of Advanced Analytics experience with a Masters Degree or 4 years with a PhD in a Mathematics or Applied Mathematics, Operations Research, Economics, Econometrics, Physics, Computer Science, Engineering, or related quantitative field. Strong foundation in AI and machine learning, with a theoretical and practical understanding of Causal machine learning approaches. Expertise in Python, with advanced data analysis and data engineering skills, including using SQL, experience git version control. Demonstrated structured wrangling and mining skills from data, and problem-solving skills using machine learning, including in real-time hackathon-like settings. Excellent communication and storytelling skills with an ability to unpack complex problems, and articulate AI/ML approaches, solutions, and results for non-technical audiences. Preferred Qualifications Experience with global financial markets, macro-economics, micro-economics, econometrics, and financial datasets. Substantial experience using Causal AI and Structured Causal Models in time series settings. Substantial experience in time series forecasting for demand use cases and/or other complex or dynamic domains like marketing/pricing A practical and effective approach to problem-solving using AI/ML and a knack for envisioning, translating business requirements into analytics requirements, and realizing feasible data science solutions. Demonstrated team leadership, project management, and business stakeholder influencing skills Experience mentoring team members to improve their own technical and project management skills. 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. We understand our outstanding opportunity to bring communities together and at the heart of that is our people. One-third of Cisconians collaborate in our 30 employee resource organizations, called Inclusive Communities, to connect, foster belonging, learn to be informed allies, and make a difference. Dedicated paid time off to volunteer—80 hours each year—allows us to give back to causes we are passionate about, and nearly 86% do Our purpose, driven by our people, is what makes us the worldwide leader in technology that powers the internet. Helping our customers reimagine their applications, secure their enterprise, transform their infrastructure, and meet their sustainability goals is what we do best. We ensure that every step we take is a step towards a more inclusive future for all. Take your next step and be you, with us Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada: When available, the salary range posted for this position reflects the projected hiring range for new hire, full-time salaries in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including equity or benefits. For non-sales roles the hiring ranges reflect base salary only; employees are also eligible to receive annual bonuses. Hiring ranges for sales positions include base and incentive compensation target. Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location and additional factors, including but not limited to skillset, experience, and relevant education, certifications, or training. Applicants may not be eligible for the full salary range based on their U.S. or Canada hiring location. The recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process. U.S. employees have access to quality medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance and numerous wellbeing offerings. Employees receive up to twelve paid holidays per calendar year, which includes one floating holiday (for non-exempt employees), plus a day off for their birthday. Non-Exempt new hires accrue up to 16 days of vacation time off each year, at a rate of 4.92 hours per pay period. Exempt new hires participate in Cisco’s flexible Vacation Time Off policy, which does not place a defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use, but is subject to availability and some business limitations. All new hires are eligible for Sick Time Off subject to Cisco’s Sick Time Off Policy and will have eighty (80) hours of sick time off provided on their hire date and on January 1st of each year thereafter. Up to 80 hours of unused sick time will be carried forward from one calendar year to the next such that the maximum number of sick time hours an employee may have available is 160 hours. Employees in Illinois have a unique time off program designed specifically with local requirements in mind. All employees also have access to paid time away to deal with critical or emergency issues. We offer additional paid time to volunteer and give back to the community. Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components. 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 up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.