Staff Software Engineer
Cisco · Durham, North Carolina ·
- Seniority
- Staff
- Employment
- Full time
- Category
- Software engineering
- Experience
- 5+ years
- Company size
- 1000+
- Salary
- USD 151,600 – 222,400 / year
Cisco · Durham, North Carolina ·
Workday · USA.VA.Reston
521 Cisco Systems Internetworking (Ireland) Limited · Galway, Ireland
eBay · Dublin
Build and operate large-scale cloud services for Splunk Cloud, designing distributed systems across AWS, GCP, and Kubernetes while driving automation and AI-driven features.
Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.
Meet The Team
Join Splunk and help shape the future of machine data!
At Splunk, we’re driven by a bold vision: to make machine data accessible, usable, and valuable to everyone. We’re a team of passionate builders who care deeply about our customers, our technology, and each other’s success. We work hard, move fast, and believe that great outcomes come from collaboration, trust, and curiosity. If you’re excited by the idea of working on mission-critical systems that deliver real customer im‐ pact - and want to be part of a growing company redefining how organizations use data to make decisions - we’d love to talk with you about the team. Our team builds and operates large-scale services that orchestrate updates and changes across customer environments in Splunk Cloud. We work at a significant scale across AWS, GCP, and Kubernetes, supporting both traditional and containerized workloads. This is an opportunity to apply deep cloud and distributed systems expertise while driving the next generation of automation that powers Splunk Cloud. Our work directly influences reliability, scalability, and customer trust, and we are continuously evolving how we build, deploy, and operate systems at scale.
Your Impact
Own features end-to-end across the complete software development lifecycle including AI, spanning requirements gathering, technical design, implementation, testing, automation, deployment, and ongoing operational ownership in production.
Translate customer and business needs into clear technical solutions, making thoughtful trade-offs that balance speed, quality, and reliability.
Design, build, and maintain highly scalable, distributed systems that handle large volumes of data.
Identify and resolve pre-production bottlenecks and production issues, improving system resilience and performance.
Participate in design and code reviews, contributing to shared engineering standards and long-term system health.
Partner closely with product managers, SREs, and cross-functional teams to deliver meaningful customer outcomes.
Participate in a rotating on-call schedule, diagnosing and resolving production issues to ensure reliability and customer trust.
Mentor junior engineers and contribute to a culture of learning, ownership, and continuous improvement.
Minimum Qualifications
Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
8+ years of professional experience in software engineering and proficiency in at least one programming language, such as Go, Python, or Java.
5+ years of experience in the design and implementation of distributed systems, including databases, distributed file systems, concurrency control, consistency models with API communication paradigms, including REST.
Preferred Qualifications
2+ years of experience with CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes, container ecosystems, and microservices-based architectures.
3+ years of experience working with public cloud providers, such as AWS, GCP, or Azure.
5+ years of experience with debugging, troubleshooting, and the use of observability and diagnostic tools.
Experience developing or deploying applications using LLMs, RAG pipelines, MCP, and multi-agent frameworks.
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.
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:
$186,900.00 - $307,800.00Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:
$166,300.00 - $274,100.00* 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.