Distinguished Engineer

Join Splunk, a Cisco company, as we strive to create a safer and more robust digital landscape through our comprehensive full stack platform designed for a hybrid, multi-cloud environment. Leading enterprises trust our unified security and observability platform to maintain the integrity and reliability of their digital systems. Contribute to help organizations flourish while you advance your career in a supportive team environment.

Meet the Team:

Our accomplished Distinguished Engineer team steers the architectural and technical strategy for Splunk's expansive $3.5B platform, which processes petabytes of data for over 95% of the Fortune 100. Working as a close-knit group under the VP of Architecture, we operate with autonomy while closely collaborating on effective, sustainable solutions for future demands. Each Engineer is responsible for distinct cross-organizational areas that adapt as required. Collaborate with intelligent engineers who prioritize thorough thought and cordial teamwork—this is where we shape the technical future

Impact:

In this role, you will design and operationalize Spark at scale as a fundamental part of Cisco Data Fabric, allowing customers to access and analyze an immense volume of data from various organizational sources. You’ll create resilient, always-on infrastructure with automatic retry mechanisms, fault tolerance, and seamless integration of diverse data sources and formats including Parquet, Iceberg, and other modern table formats. Develop the operational backbone for monitoring, observability, error handling, and horizontal scalability, enabling hundreds of engineers to confidently build features on a solid foundation. Your success will be measured by customer adoption of data fabric capabilities and operational reliability metrics—uptime, ingestion performance, and incident reduction—that enhance customer value.

Minimum Qualifications:

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

• Experience designing and deploying Spark at scale in production cloud settings.

• Familiarity with modern data formats such as Parquet, Iceberg, and related columnar formats.

• Significant production experience with the AWS cloud platform.

• Leadership experience making technical decisions and guiding architectural direction across engineering teams of 50+ engineers.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with Azure and/or GCP cloud platforms in production.

• Experience integrating with diverse data platforms such as Snowflake, Pinot, Databricks, Trino, or similar systems.

• Extensive experience with Kubernetes in a production environment.

• Demonstrated ability to mentor and develop engineers, with strong collaborative skills across sponsors, design teams, product management, and engineering.

Why Cisco?

At Cisco, we are transforming the way data and infrastructure connect, protecting organizations in the AI era and beyond. With over 40 years of bold innovation, we create solutions that enhance how humans and technology collaborate across the physical and digital realms. Our comprehensive technology enables us to develop impactful solutions. Coupled with a global network of proactive contributors and experts, your growth and contribution opportunities are boundless. We foster a culture of collaboration and empathy to achieve remarkable accomplishments on a global scale. Our comprehensive solutions mean our impact is felt everywhere.

We are Cisco, and our success starts with you.

Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada:

The starting salary range for this position is $267,600.00 to $339,400.00, reflecting the projected salary for new hires in this role in U.S. and/or Canada locations, excluding incentive compensation, equity, or benefits.

Compensation is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skills, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. For specific location information, recruiters can share further details about compensation during the hiring process.

U.S. employees are provided with benefits following Cisco's eligibility rules, including medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with Cisco matching contributions, paid parental leave, disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please visit the Cisco careers site for additional benefits and perks.

U.S. employees are also entitled to paid time away as per Cisco policies:

• 10 paid holidays annually, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees.

• 1 paid day off for the employee's birthday, a year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid personal wellness days determined by Cisco.

• Non-exempt employees receive 16 days of paid vacation per year, accrued at 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees.

• Exempt employees can participate in Cisco's flexible vacation policy, allowing for unlimited vacation time (subject to availability and some business considerations).

• 80 hours of sick time off provided upfront, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time can be carried over each calendar year.

• Additional paid time off may be requested for critical family emergencies.

• Optional 10 paid volunteer days per year.

For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible for annual bonuses in line with Cisco's policies.

Employees in sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay in addition to their base salary, which is structured into quota-related and non-quota components based on the specific Cisco plan. For quota-related pay, Cisco typically follows this structure:

• .75% of incentive target for each 1% revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;

• 1.5% of incentive target for each 1% attainment between 50% and 75%;

• 1% of incentive target for each 1% attainment between 75% and 100%; and

• Once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% with no cap on incentive compensation.

Sales performance elements not based on quotas may yield 0% to 125% of target pay. Cisco's sales plans do not require a minimum performance threshold for sales incentive compensation.

Applicable full salary ranges for this position by specific state are detailed 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 within Cisco's sales plan, the ranges listed herein incorporate base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.

** Employees in Illinois: Entire exemption policies apply for state-specific requirements.

Cisco is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, genetic information, age, disability, veteran status, or other legally protected categories.

Cisco evaluates each applicant individually concerning arrest and conviction history.