Overview

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.

You Will

• Build and optimize petabyte scale ingestion and storage for telemetry data such as Metrics, Traces, 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.

Role Summary

As a Senior Staff Software Engineer, you will architect and 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.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and deliver high-performance streaming ingestion and query services that serve as the data foundation for Splunk's advanced analytics and observability capabilities.
• Build, deploy, and operate core ingestion, storage, and query components using GitLab, Kubernetes, and AI-driven tooling to accelerate development and improve operational efficiency.
• Proactively monitor, optimize, and troubleshoot complex distributed systems in real time, applying deep performance-profiling expertise to ensure platform resilience and reliability.
• 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

• At least 6 months of experience effectively using LLM based coding assistant tools, with a strong AI first mindset.
• 3+ years architecting and delivering large scale, 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.

Educational Requirement

• BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field plus 12+ years of experience, OR
• MS with 10+ years' experience, OR
• PhD with 5+ years' experience.

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 Join Us

In this role, you will directly influence how global enterprises understand and control their systems in real time. Success means delivering a platform that is powerful, scalable, and a delight to use - helping customers solve problems faster, avoid costly downtime, and operate with confidence in an increasingly complex digital world.

Company Context

Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada: The starting salary range posted for this position is $210,600.00 to $305,100.00 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 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 eligibility rules, including medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with matching, paid parental leave, disability coverage, and basic life insurance. U.S. employees may also be eligible for grants of restricted stock units. Benefits details are provided on the Cisco careers site. The following time off and incentive structures apply to U.S. employees and are subject to Cisco policy and location:

• 10 paid holidays per 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
• Non-exempt employees receive 16 days of paid vacation per year (accrued)
• Exempt employees participate in a flexible vacation time-off program
• 80 hours of sick time on hire date and per year, with carryover provisions
• Additional paid time away for emergencies
• Optional 10 paid days per year to volunteer

For non-sales roles, employees may be eligible for annual bonuses subject to policy. In sales plans, incentive pay structures are described separately and are not guaranteed.

New York City Metro Area ranges: $210,600.00 - $350,800.00; Non-Metro New York State & Washington State ranges: $189,300.00 - $312,200.00. For quota-based roles, ranges include base pay and incentive compensation. Location-based details will be provided during hiring.