Technical Leader

The application window is expected to close on: 10/25/2026

Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.

Meet the Team

You will join our platform engineering team as a Technical Leader, helping lead the design and development of large-scale data plane systems that power the Splunk data ingestion infrastructure.

The team builds high-throughput, fault-tolerant distributed systems that ingest and process observability data, including metrics, logs, and traces, at scale. You will help set technical direction, mentor engineers across multiple teams, and influence architecture decisions from prototype through production.

Your Impact

• Architect and lead the development of high-throughput, fault-tolerant distributed systems that ingest and process observability data (metrics, logs, traces) at scale.

• Define and drive the technical roadmap for platform reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency.

• Partner with product and engineering leadership to translate business requirements into technically sound, pragmatic designs.

• Establish best practices and standards for observability and capacity planning, participate in incident response, and lead blameless post-incident reviews.

• Mentor and level up senior engineers; raise the overall technical bar through design reviews and code reviews.

• Own systems end-to-end — from design through deployment, monitoring, and post-incident analysis.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field with 10+ years of experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems in production, with strong proficiency in programming languages such as Golang.

• Experience with modern observability platforms, designing pipelines for logs, metrics, and traces for storage and processing on different backend systems such as Splunk, Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, or similar technologies. Experience designing observability for large systems, not just consuming it.

• Experience with one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure) at a platform level, including networking, storage, and cost optimization.

• Experience in full-lifecycle agentic development, with a good understanding of context and harness engineering best practices and a drive to explore the constantly evolving space.

• Technical leadership experience and cross-functional influence, including experience operating at the Staff or Principal level: driving multi-team technical decisions, producing architecture proposals, mentoring senior engineers, and aligning technical strategy with business goals without requiring formal authority.

Preferred Qualifications

• Proven track record owning systems that process high-volume data streams, with demonstrated skill in capacity planning, traffic management, SLI/SLO definitions, and incident response at scale.

• C++ proficiency.

• Practical experience with container technologies, including Docker/OCI containers and running them at scale in Kubernetes.

• Experience designing systems with security-first principles.

• A strong operational mindset: designing for failure, instrumenting systems, participating directly in on-call responsibilities, and owning services/components through operations.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

• Ability to recognize when to prototype quickly and when to slow down for rigor.

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 $171,100.00 to $216,300.00 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:

$194,600.00 - $328,600.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$179,000.00 - $294,000.00

* 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.