Distinguished Engineer

Splunk, a Cisco company, is building a safer and more resilient digital world with an end-to-end full stack platform made for a hybrid, multi-cloud world. Leading enterprises use our unified security and observability platform to keep their digital systems secure and reliable. Come help organizations be their best, while you reach new heights with a team that has your back.

Meet the Team

Our Distinguished Engineer team drives architecture and technical direction for Splunk's $3.5B platform, ingesting petabytes of data for over 95% of the Fortune 100. As a tight-knit group of DEs reporting to the VP of Architecture, we operate autonomously while coordinating closely on practical, durable solutions that evolve the platform for future requirements. Each DE owns cross-organizational domains that shift fluidly as needs arise. Work alongside exceptionally smart engineers who value rigorous thinking and friendly collaboration-this is where the technical future gets defined

Impact:

Architect and operationalize AI infrastructure as a core component of Cisco Data Fabric, enabling engineering teams to integrate AI capabilities across the world's largest, most diverse data sets. Design MLOps platforms that solve complex lifecycle challenges-managing embedding model migrations, version compatibility, and continuous model updates-while ensuring operational excellence through monitoring, governance, and serving at petabyte scale. Identify and drive new opportunities for leveraging AI across the stack, establishing consistent architectural patterns for agent prompts, tool integration, and model orchestration. Build data pipelines and operational frameworks that enable hundreds of engineers to confidently deploy both LLMs and traditional ML models into production. Success is measured by customer adoption and usage of AI-powered features, alongside operational metrics-model performance, inference latency, and deployment velocity-that directly impact customer value.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's in Computer Science (or equivalent) with 15+ years of related experience; or Master's with 12+ years; or PhD with 8+ years or equivalent experience

• Designed and deployed AI/ML infrastructure and features in production cloud environments

• Experience with major AI services including OpenAI, Anthropic, HuggingFace, AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI Service, or similar platforms

• Production experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP cloud platform

• Led technical decisions and architectural direction across engineering organizations of 50+ engineers

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with LLM-specific infrastructure including agent frameworks, prompt management, and tool integration

• Model serving at scale with experience in inference optimization and performance monitoring

• Designed and deployed AI/ML infrastructure for on-premises environments

• Experience with major ML frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch, etc.) and model formats

• Proven track record mentoring and growing engineers, with strong collaboration skills

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 $267,600.00 to $339,400.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including incentive compensation*, 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 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:

$273,200.00 - $442,600.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$267,600.00 - $390,300.00

• 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.

Cisco is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, genetic information, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected basis.

Cisco will consider for employment, on a case by case basis, qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.