Principal Software Engineer

The application window is expected to close on: 02/12/2026 Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received. About the team Cisco & Splunk are here to build a safer and more resilient digital world. The world's leading enterprises use our unified security and observability platform to keep their digital systems secure and reliable. While customers love our technology, it's our people that make Splunk stand out as an amazing career destination and why we've won so many awards as one of the best places to work. We want to build the best possible team, with experts and skills of all sorts, to help our customers answer all possible questions with their data, even those they don’t know they have. Search and Analytics are the core functions of the Splunk Platform. We are responsible for high performance, high efficiency data analytics, both wide-spectrum and needle-in-a-haystack, as well as everything in between. Our customers depend on us to reliably, consistently, and performantly find and surface answers to their questions across disparate data, with or without schema, with or without structure. Role Summary As a Principal Engineer, you will be responsible for chartering the vision and direction of Search and Analytics engineering. In this role you will: Be the technical leader, coach, and mentor for a world class team of Senior Staff and Staff Engineers working across different projects in Search. Develop architectural north stars and guide the design and evolution of the product and platform incrementally towards those north stars. Iterate with teams and leads on tactical and strategic improvements to both the product and our internal development and design approaches. Be responsible and accountable for leading one or more specific projects to launch and customer adoption, while ensuring the overall thrust of engineering is coherent and in step across different projects. Collaborate with our Product team to build a strong roadmap for Search and Analytics offerings across different customer focuses. Liaise with technical leaders and architects across Cisco to shape the technical direction of Search and Analytics, as well as nearby and far away products that relate to our work. Minimum Qualifications Bachelors + 15 years of related experience, or Masters + 12 years of related experience, or PhD + 10 years of related experience Proven track record of designing systems that fit into a larger Data Platform Architeture Industry experience in developing 2-3 year technical roadmap for the organization working with Distinguished Engineers and Senior Product Leaders Experience with both Cloud based and On-Prem Solutions Experience and skill with mentoring, growing, and leading a diverse group of technical leaders on large scale projects Expertise in solving conflicting technical requirements and timelines with an eye towards best outcomes in least time Mitigating, resolving, and communicating about customer-facing issues and production incidents Excellent written technical communication skills, and skilled at addressing and incorporating feedback on technical documentation Preferred Qualifications Experience in architecting and designing Data Orchestration or Data Catalog products Knowledge of data bases, data formats and search techniques Hands on working experience with AWS, C++/Go and SQL-like databases Exposure to Spark as an engine and integrating it with other products 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 solut ... (truncated, view full listing at source)