Leader, Software Engineering

Applicants must be available to work onsite at the RTP, NC office.

Meet the Team

The Splunk Search Experience backend team sits at the core of the Splunk Platform, poweringCisco Data Fabricvision to transform machine data into AI-ready intelligence.

We are seeking an experienced engineering leader to guide a team of passionate distributed systems engineers in building the next-generation, highly scalable search platform that fuels AI-driven workflows across our products.

In this role, you will lead the evolution of Splunk's flagship search engine capabilities, ensuring the platform meets the next wave of customer scale, performance, and reliability needs. You will partner with engineering, product, and cross-functional teams to deliver high-performance, efficient, and resilient backend search services that delight customers.

Your Impact

• Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing team of backend and distributed-systems engineers.
• Drive the architecture, scalability, and reliability of Splunk's search backend to support massive data volumes and advanced AI-driven use cases.
• Partner with product and platform teams to define long-term strategy for search services and execution roadmaps.
• Foster a culture of engineering excellence, operational rigor, and customer-centric innovation.
• Own delivery of high-quality, performant backend features and services that power search across the Splunk ecosystem.
• Champion best practices in distributed systems, cloud-native design, reliability engineering, and performance optimization.

Minimum Qualifications

Preferred Qualifications

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 $174,700.00 to $253,400.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and / or Canada locations, not including incentive compensation

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

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 :

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 :

$210,600.00 - $350,800.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state :

$189,300.00 - $312,200.00