Staff Software Engineer

Cisco; Kraków; On-site; PLN 320,000 - 520,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco’s MDC team in Kraków seeks a Staff Engineer to shape architectural decisions and build scalable knowledge-graph systems that power data discovery and lineage.

You will lead design of distributed services, drive observability and reliability, mentor engineers, and collaborate with product and SRE teams across Cisco Data Fabric to deliver unified solutions at enterprise scale.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's in computer science / engineering with 8+ years experience or equivalent higher qualifications.
• Distributed Systems & Cloud: design/build/deploy of enterprise-grade distributed systems and cloud-native microservices in production (AWS/Azure/GCP).
• Core Programming: strong debugging and system-level programming in Go/Java/C++.
• Containers & Orchestration: Docker and Kubernetes hands-on experience.
• CI/CD & DevOps: modern CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, infrastructure-as-code in Agile environments.
• Engineering Fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, concurrency, system design, DB principles.

Responsibilities

• Drive Architecture & Design: lead technical design and implementation of scalable features and microservices in MDC and Knowledge Graph platform.
• Build Scalable Distributed Systems: design/optimize high-throughput services for large-scale graph relationships and data lineage queries.
• Raise the Engineering Bar: promote engineering best practices, code quality, and Developer Owned Quality mindset.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: mentor mid-level and early-career engineers, fostering growth and operational rigor.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: partner with Product Managers, Architects, SREs, and other Cisco Data Fabric teams.
• Operational Excellence: own production services, establish observability standards, SLOs/SLAs, performance benchmarks, on-call rotations.

Skills

Leadership

Architectural design

Mentorship

Cross-functional collaboration

Observability & reliability

Communication

Education

Bachelor's in Computer Science or Engineering

Master's degree

PhD (relevant field)

Tools

Go

Java

C++

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

Azure

GCP

CI/CD tooling

IaC (Terraform)

Job description

Meet the Team

The Splunk Metadata Catalog (MDC) team is part of the core Splunk Platform organization. We are building a high-scale Knowledge Graph that empowers Splunk users to discover data assets effortlessly, map complex relationships, and trace data lineage across diverse ecosystems.

You will join a fast-paced, high-impact team pioneering foundational technology central to the Cisco Data Fabric strategy. As a Staff Engineer, you will shape architectural decisions and build systems that scale across enterprise-grade data platforms.

Your Impact

• Drive Architecture & Design: Lead the technical design, architecture, and implementation of complex, highly scalable features and microservices within the Metadata Catalog and Knowledge Graph platform.
• Build Scalable Distributed Systems: Design, build, and optimize robust, low-latency, and high-throughput services that handle large-scale graph relationships and data lineage queries.
• Raise the Engineering Bar: Champion engineering best practices, design reviews, code quality, and a robust Developer Owned Quality mindset across the team.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Guide, mentor, and coach mid-level and early-career engineers, fostering technical growth and operational rigor.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with Product Managers, Architects, SREs, and peer engineering teams across Cisco Data Fabric to deliver unified solutions.
• Operational Excellence: Own services in production, establishing observability standards, SLOs/SLAs, performance benchmarks, and participating in on‑call rotations and post-incident reviews.

Minimum Qualifications

• Education & Experience: Bachelor's in computer science / engineering + 8 years of related experience, or Masters + 6 years of related experience, or PhD + 3 years of related experience
• Distributed Systems & Cloud: Proven track record of designing, building, and deploying enterprise-grade distributed systems and cloud-native microservices in production (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Core Programming: Advanced proficiency with strong debugging and system-level programming skills in an object-oriented or systems language (e.g., Go, Java, or C++).
• Containers & Orchestration: Strong hands‑on experience with containerization and orchestration platforms (Docker, Kubernetes).
• CI/CD & DevOps: Deep experience with modern CI/CD pipelines, automated testing frameworks, and infrastructure-as-code practices in an Agile environment.
• Engineering Fundamentals: Strong mastery of data structures, algorithms, concurrency, system design, and database principles.

Preferred Qualifications

• Graph Technologies: Direct experience working with graph databases (Neo4j, AWS Neptune, Apache AGE, ArangoDB) or query languages/frameworks (Cypher, Gremlin, GraphQL, RDF/SPARQL).
• Metadata & Lineage Systems: Background building metadata catalogs, data governance tools, schema registries, or data lineage platforms.
• Big Data & Streaming: Familiarity with high-throughput streaming and data processing systems (e.g., Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, Apache Spark).
• Observability & Reliability: Experience establishing observability metrics, tracing (e.g., OpenTelemetry, Prometheus), and resilience patterns for mission-critical cloud services.
• Communication & Influence: Excellent verbal and written communication skills with the ability to articulate complex technical trade-offs to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

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.