Senior Staff Software Engineer

About this role

Senior Staff Software Engineer

Seattle, Washington, United States of America

Product and Engineering

2028994

Hybrid

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Job Description

The application window is expected to close on: 11/05/2026

Meet the Team

The Edge Processor Team serves as the engine of the Splunk Integrated Data Platform, architecting and maintaining pipelines that process petabytes of data on the customer’s edge environment. Our work sits at the critical intersection of Cisco and Splunk integration, providing the critical infrastructure that powers real-time observability and security for our global enterprise customers. We are a high-performing, collaborative organization that prioritizes clean code, meticulous testing, and pragmatic architectural decision-making. Operating in a hybrid/remote environment, we champion technical excellence and continuous learning as our standards. This role offers an outstanding opportunity to address sophisticated distributed systems challenges at a scale unmatched in the industry.

Your Impact

In this role, you will lead the end-to-end delivery of sophisticated projects spanning multiple months, navigating the full software development cycle from requirements gathering and system design to deployment. You will set the technical vision for the team by establishing coding guidelines and design standards to ensure high-quality, maintainable, and serviceable products. A core part of your impact involves identifying and resolving system bottlenecks, engaging in deep-dive design and code reviews, and proactively improving our understanding of customer experiences. Additionally, you will participate in rotating on-call duties to diagnose and solve sophisticated customer issues, ensuring the reliability of our infrastructure. Success is defined by your ability to drive technical consensus across multi-functional teams while maintaining the performance and scalability of our large-scale distributed systems.

Minimum Qualifications

• 12+ years of Software Development experience, with a significant portion served in a lead or architect capacity.
• Experience designing, shipping, and supporting high-performance, high-throughput, and low-latency data processing components.
• Experience shipping and supporting both cloud-native services and on-premises software solutions using programming languages such as GoLang, C, or C++.
• Experience designing, architecting, and implementing large-scale distributed systems with a focus on reliability, scalability, performance, and understanding of core concepts like consistency models and fault tolerance.

Preferred Qualifications

• Delivering high-quality, maintainable code, and the ability to quickly adapt to new technologies.
• Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills, with expertise in using Linux-based tools and diagnostic techniques.
• A strong advocate for operational perfection, driving standard processes for monitoring, alerting, and incident response across the team and advocating for robust production readiness.
• Experience leading the design and delivery of projects with a scope of 6 months or more, involving collaboration with horizontal (multi-functional) teams to influence technical direction and drive consensus.

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 $192,400.00 to $275,800.00 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:

$214,100.00 - $356,300.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$192,400.00 - $317,200.00

\* 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.