New

Staff Software Engineer

Cisco Systems, Inc.
$183,800.00 to $263,600.00
life insurance, vision insurance, parental leave, paid holidays, sick time, 401(k)
United States, California, San Jose
170 W Tasman Dr (Show on map)
Jan 18, 2026
Meet the Team Splunk's mission is to build a safer, more resilient digital world. Leading enterprises rely on our unified security and observability platform to keep systems secure, reliable, and performing at their best. While customers love our technology, it's our people who truly make Splunk a top career destination, reflected in our many "Best Place to Work" awards. If you become a Splunker, we want your whole, authentic self-what we call your "million data points." Bring your experience, problem solving skills, and talent, plus your energy, passion, and all the unique qualities that make you, you. Our Observability Platform Team comprises highly skilled engineers who work on the core data platform that powers Splunk's observability products. We deliver a scalable data foundation that enables teams across Splunk to build the observability features our customers depend on. We operate in small, high impact teams that tackle data on a massive scale. Role Overview As a Staff Software Engineer, you will build real-time, high-throughput data processing systems that ingest and analyze billions of metrics per minute. You will define the technical strategy for our next-generation observability platform, ensuring it continues to scale, perform, and evolve with customer and AI-driven demands. Partnering closely with product management and engineering teams across Splunk, you will deliver core capabilities that prioritize scalability, reliability, and low-latency performance. Your work will directly shape how customers monitor and operate mission-critical systems worldwide. You will continually drive innovation by evaluating emerging technologies and introducing forward-looking improvements to the platform. Your Impact The rise of agentic AI brings new opportunities and challenges in scaling our platform for both agents and human users. This role is your chance to shape the next era of Splunk Observability - increasing scale, delighting customers, and evolving our successful platform. You'll work with large scale distributed systems, leverage opensource technologies when practical, and write high performance custom code where necessary. Build and optimize petabyte scale ingestion and storage for telemetry data such as Metrics and Events. Lead the design of real time analytics and low latency querying for both streaming and batch workflows. Drive modernization initiatives and set the technical vision for the platform. Establish technical direction for handling high cardinality, high dimensionality, and massive data volumes. Develop and enforce system-wide architecture principles: scalability, resilience, security, cost-efficiency, and performance. Research, evaluate, and integrate emerging technologies, AI frameworks, and open-source solutions to advance the team's technical stack and the platform's scalability and performance. Partner closely with product managers to define feature requirements, guide technical execution, and ensure high-quality, predictable delivery across teams. Support production systems by diagnosing and resolving difficult escalations quickly, minimizing customer impact, and maintaining service continuity. Minimum Qualifications BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field plus 8+ years of experience, or MS with 6+ years' experience, or PhD with 3+ years' experience. At least 6 months of experience effectively using LLM based coding assistant tools, with a strong AI first mindset. 3+ years delivering largescale, distributed SaaS solutions. Deep knowledge of microservices and distributed application architectures and understanding when simplification is the better path. Strong problem solving and communication skills, able to simplify complex technical concepts for any audience. Proficient in Java, with a track record of quickly learning new languages. Preferred Qualifications Deep domain knowledge in observability and monitoring. Robust troubleshooting, profiling, and performance tuning skills. DevOps automation mindset with experience in CI/CD pipelines. Passion for engineering efficiency and process optimization. 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. Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada: The starting salary range posted for this position is $183,800.00 to $263,600.00 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 ofunused sick timecarried forwardfrom one calendar yearto 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: $183,800.00 - $303,100.00 Non-Metro New York state & Washington state: $163,600.00 - $269,800.00 * 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.