Distinguished Engineer
The application window is expected to close on: 07/22/2026 Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received . Distinguished Engineer, Splunk AgenticOps and AI Engineering Transformation Location: Remote, West Coast hours preferred Meet the Team Splunk’s AgenticOps and AI Engineering Transformation team is focused on making AI a practical, governed part of real security, observability, and operational workflows.
The team connects Splunk’s telemetry, topology, identity, risk, platform, and Cisco network/application context so customers can investigate faster, understand root cause more clearly, and act safely. You will work with a lean, senior, cross-functional group spanning engineering, product, architecture, AI, security, observability, platform, and Cisco-connected experiences.
The vibe is technical, pragmatic, customer-grounded, and highly collaborative, with a strong bias toward turning promising ideas into durable product capabilities. What makes the work exciting is the chance to shape how enterprise AI moves beyond chatbots into trusted, evidence-based operational assistance .
Your Impact Define the technical direction for AgenticOps foundations across Splunk’s unified security and observability portfolio. Shape governed AI workflows that use telemetry, topology, identity, ownership, risk, network context, and product knowledge to help customers investigate, triage, respond, and remediate with confidence.
Partner with product and engineering leaders to identify the highest-value product wedges, guide prototypes, clarify architectural tradeoffs, and move ideas into shippable capabilities. Develop reusable platform patterns for MCP/tool access, evidence chains, permissions, audit-ability, approvals, policy enforcement, evaluation, and safe action.
Drive AI-assisted engineering transformation across planning, coding, review, testing, release readiness, support, incident learning, and operations so teams gain execution leverage without lowering Splunk’s quality bar. Minimum Qualifications Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science , Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience. 15+ years of experience building, leading, or architecting large-scale software systems used by enterprise customers.
Experience designing or operating data-intensive, distributed, AI-assisted, agentic, or operational software systems. Production software engineering experience, including writing or reviewing production-quality code. Experience defining architecture for platform capabilities such as workflow orchestration, tool access, permissions, audit logs, approvals, policy enforcement, or safe automation.
Experience delivering technical direction that changes how multiple engineering teams build, test, support, operate , evaluate, or ship software. Preferred Qualifications Experience with AI-assisted development, agentic workflows, LLM application architecture, AI evaluation, prompt/tool orchestration, or human-in-the-loop systems.
Experience with telemetry, observability, security analytics, time-series systems, event processing, or data platforms. Experience with graph systems, entity identity, semantic layers, topology, temporal modeling, or operational context modeling.
Experience building products for cloud, hybrid, and customer-managed deployment environments. Ability to influence across engineering, product, architecture, field, executive, and customer-facing teams while mentoring senior engineers through ambiguous technical decisions.
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 $267,600.00 to $339,400.00 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: $273,200.00 - $442,600.00 Non-Metro New York state & Washington state: $267,600.00 - $390,300.00 * 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.