Principal Software Engineer

The application window is expected to close on: 09/29/2026 Meet The Team Splunk’s Platform Engineering team is evolving the core platform to run reliably on Kubernetes across cloud and customer-managed environments. The team builds the runtime foundations, orchestration patterns, lifecycle capabilities, and platform services that enable Splunk products to move faster on a common cloud-native substrate. We are a senior, systems-oriented group working across core engineering, product, security, operations, and customer-facing teams. Our work is complex, high-impact, and central to Splunk’s FY27 priorities around Kubernetes adoption, cloud growth, customer-managed platform parity, and future innovation. This is an opportunity to help shape how a large-scale enterprise platform modernizes while preserving the reliability and compatibility customers depend on. Your Impact Lead technical direction for Kubernetes-based platform architecture that makes Splunk easier to deploy, operate, upgrade, diagnose, and evolve. Translate complex product, customer, and feature-team requirements into practical designs, engineering contracts, and implementation plans. Partner across core runtime, Kubernetes operator, configuration, application platform, search, security, cloud, and product teams to align execution around reusable architecture. Identify cross-component dependencies, failure modes, [... source excerpt omitted ...] ase or customer-impacting issues. Drive incremental modernization of a mature enterprise platform while preserving customer trust, compatibility, and operational quality. Minimum Qualifications Bachelors in related field with 15 years experience. 10+ years of professional software engineering experience building backend, platform, infrastructure, or distributed systems. 5+ years of experience designing, building, or operating production distributed systems. 2+ years of hands-on Kubernetes experience, including workload orchestration, operators/controllers, or cloud-native deployment patterns. Experience designing production APIs, lifecycle orchestration, configuration systems, up [... source excerpt omitted ...] ure automation, or large-scale platform services. Experience modernizing legacy or monolithic enterprise systems toward cloud-native operating models. Experience with enterprise customer commitments, regulated environments, cloud/on-prem deployment variance, and long-lived compatibility expectations. Ability to synthesize ambiguous cross-team requirements into clear technical direction, tradeoffs, and execution plans. Interest in using AI-assisted engineering tools responsibly for code comprehension, review preparation, test planning, incident triage, documentation, or migration analysis. Why Cisco? At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and pro