Principal Site Reliability Engineer

Who We Are

Cisco ThousandEyes is a Digital Experience Assurance platform that empowers organizations to deliver flawless digital experiences across every network – even the ones they don’t own. Powered by AI and an unmatched set of cloud, internet and enterprise network telemetry data, ThousandEyes enables IT teams to proactively detect, diagnose, and remediate issues – before they impact end- user experiences.

ThousandEyes is deeply integrated across the entire Cisco technology portfolio and beyond, helping customers deploy at scale while also delivering AI-powered assurance insights within Cisco’s leading Networking, Security, Collaboration, and Observability portfolios.

About The Role

The Application Window is expected to close on 8/11/25. However, the job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received. 

The Datastores team is focused on running our platform’s mission critical datastores (think ElasticSearch, Kafka, MongoDB, MySQL, etc). The team is responsible for all aspects of our platform’s datastores reliability, such as availability, performance, change management, capacity planning, monitoring and emergency response. 

As a Principal Site Reliability you will focus on innovating and providing strong technical vision as well as work with the team to build reliable, scalable and highly available datastores on a constantly growing multi-region scale platform. You will partner with leaders across ThousandEyes as a datastores subject matter expert to help design the best architectures and processes, and be a role model for the Engineering team in delivery and team work.

What You’ll Do

We’re looking for a reliability-focused engineering leader to focus on automation and help drive datastores operational excellence to a new level. With evergrowing volumes of data and operating at a multi-region scale this is an opportunity for you to join a team and help take the ThousandEyes platform’s datastores to a new level.

Here are some of the main things we are looking for:

• Deep knowledge of datastores. You have experience building and supporting mission critical datastores, and be happy talking relational and nosql. You are able to ensure that the ThousandEyes platform’s services are using the right datastores infrastructure, designed and optimized for availability, latency and performance.

• Strong technical vision. You can collaborate with and beyond the team to formulate a compelling vision for the systems the team owns. You have the communication skills to sell it and to make sure it is represented in the team’s strategy and roadmap.

• Expert in reliability. This is a hands-on role, so you will be excited by the opportunity to write software, automate and build reliable systems in order to enable our datastores to scale effortlessly. Think self service. You will have many examples of successfully delivering complex systems. 

• Natural collaborator. It takes a village to do anything worthwhile, and you’re happy working across Engineering and Product Management to help shape the future direction of the platform’s datastores.

• Effective mentor. You have a passion to up-level the team and those around you. You are open to learning as well…nobody is an expert at everything.

Qualifications

• Ability to design and implement scalable and well tested solutions, with focus on datastores.

• Ability to write high quality code in Python, Go, or equivalent languages.

• Strong Infrastructure as Code skills, ideally with Terraform and Kubernetes.

• Good knowledge of cloud provider managed services (ideally AWS), and how they can be leveraged in our context.

• Good understanding of Unix/Linux systems, the kernel, system libraries, file systems, and client-server protocols.

• Strong communication and documentation skills.

Cisco values the perspectives and skills that emerge from employees with diverse backgrounds. That's why Cisco is expanding the boundaries of discovering top talent by not only focusing on candidates with educational degrees and experience but also placing more emphasis on unlocking potential. We believe that everyone has something to offer and that diverse teams are better equipped to solve problems, innovate, and create a positive impact.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification. Research shows that people from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy. We urge you not to prematurely exclude yourself and to apply if you're interested in this work.

US – COMPENSATION RANGE – MESSAGE TO APPLICANTS

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

When available, the salary range posted for this position reflects the projected hiring range for new hire, full-time salaries in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including equity or benefits. For non-sales roles the hiring ranges reflect base salary only; employees are also eligible to receive annual bonuses. Hiring ranges for sales positions include base and incentive compensation target. Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location and additional factors, including but not limited to skillset, experience, and relevant education, certifications, or training. Applicants may not be eligible for the full salary range based on their U.S. or Canada hiring location. The recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees have access to quality medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance and numerous wellbeing offerings.

Employees receive up to twelve paid holidays per calendar year, which includes one floating holiday (for non-exempt employees), plus a day off for their birthday. Non-Exempt new hires accrue up to 16 days of vacation time off each year, at a rate of 4.92 hours per pay period. Exempt new hires participate in Cisco’s flexible Vacation Time Off policy, which does not place a defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use, but is subject to availability and some business limitations. All new hires are eligible for Sick Time Off subject to Cisco’s Sick Time Off Policy and will have eighty (80) hours of sick time off provided on their hire date and on January 1st of each year thereafter.  Up to 80 hours of unused sick time will be carried forward from one calendar year to the next such that the maximum number of sick time hours an employee may have available is 160 hours. Employees in Illinois have a unique time off program designed specifically with local requirements in mind. All employees also have access to paid time away to deal with critical or emergency issues. We offer additional paid time to volunteer and give back to the community.

Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components. 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 up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.