Principal Software Engineer (Hybrid Remote- San Jose, CA)

Cisco; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

An innovative company is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead the design and implementation of robust software frameworks. This dynamic role involves building scalable systems, driving engineering excellence, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to enhance product capabilities. You will have the opportunity to influence the product roadmap and deliver intelligent automation solutions that transform security responses. If you are passionate about software engineering and eager to make a significant impact, this role offers a unique chance to thrive in a collaborative and forward-thinking environment.

Qualifications

• 8-10+ years in software engineering and test automation.
• Expertise in Python, C++, Go, and scalable code development.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and delivery of robust software systems.
• Collaborate with teams to define test strategies and ensure quality.

Skills

Python

C++

Go

Test Automation

Cloud Platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)

Observability Tools (SignalFX, Grafana, Prometheus)

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

GitLab CI

Terraform

Ansible

Job description

Principal Software Engineer (Hybrid Remote - San Jose, CA)

Meet the Team

Join us as we pursue our mission to make machine data accessible, usable, and valuable to everyone. At Cisco, we’re passionate about empowering our customers through reliable, scalable, and secure infrastructure. Our people thrive on innovation, collaboration, and a shared drive to deliver outstanding experiences. We're committed to our work, to our customers, and most importantly—to each other’s success.

Are you passionate about building robust, scalable software systems that drive real product impact? Do you thrive at the intersection of engineering and product—architecting secure, distributed platforms while collaborating closely with cross-functional teams to shape feature direction and technical strategy? If so, a role on our Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) team could be the perfect fit—offering the opportunity to take ownership of critical systems, influence the product roadmap, and deliver intelligent automation capabilities that transform how security teams respond to emerging threats.

Your Impact

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will lead the design and implementation of robust, reusable software frameworks that enhance code quality, scalability, and maintainability across the engineering organization. You’ll take ownership of driving engineering excellence through thoughtful architecture, clean abstractions, and best-in-class development practices.

You’ll build systems that validate the behavior of complex, cloud-native applications, applying principles from distributed systems, algorithms, and software design to ensure correctness and performance. Your contributions will elevate developer experience, accelerate innovation, and strengthen the foundation of our software platforms.

What You’ll Do

1. Lead the design, coding and delivery of robust software systems that support rapid, secure, and high-quality product delivery across the full software development lifecycle.
2. Drive the development of scalable security automation features within the SOAR platform, enabling intelligent threat detection, response, and remediation capabilities.
3. Collaborate with product, QA, and engineering teams to define test strategies and integrate comprehensive test coverage—including unit, integration, performance, and security testing—into the development workflow.
4. Contribute to system architecture by designing maintainable backend services and reusable libraries that support cloud-native and on-prem deployments.
5. Develop observability features such as logging, metrics collection, and application-level alerts to monitor product health and performance across environments.
6. Provide technical leadership in supporting the availability and stability of the SOAR platform, participating in issue triage and resolution across releases.
7. Mentor engineers on system design, clean code practices, code reviews, secure development, and test automation, supporting a high-performing engineering culture.
8. Stay up to date with emerging tools, technologies, and best practices in software engineering, security automation, and continuous improvement.
9. Partner closely with product managers and cross-functional stakeholders to ensure engineering solutions align with product goals, scale effectively, and evolve with user needs.

Basic Qualifications

1. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, with 8–10+ years of experience in software engineering, test automation, and end-to-end product development.
2. Rockstar programming skills in Python, C++, Go, or similar languages, with an emphasis on building clean, scalable, and maintainable code for production SAAS and on-prem product lines.
3. Deep expertise in leveraging test frameworks (e.g., Pytest, JUnit, Selenium, Robot Framework, Cypress) to validate microservices, APIs, and complex distributed systems.
4. Experience designing containerized development and test environments (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes) to enable faster, more reliable software delivery and ensure consistent user experiences across environments.
5. Proficient in continuous integration tools (e.g., GitLab CI) and version control systems (e.g., Git), with hands-on experience in automating builds, tests, and releases.
6. Knowledge of infrastructure provisioning tools (e.g., Terraform, Puppet, Ansible, CloudFormation) in the context of supporting product development and testing automation.
7. Strong background in working with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), especially in setting up and optimizing dev/test environments and using platform-native tools to enhance engineering workflows.

Preferred Qualifications

1. 10+ years experience architecting, designing, coding and delivering large-scale, distributed systems with a focus on performance, scalability, maintainability, and fault tolerance across the full software development lifecycle.
2. 10+ years proven ability to define and own technical direction and drive engineering execution across multiple product lines or platform components, contributing to long-term continuous product improvement and codebase quality.
3. 10+ years of expertise in monitoring software health and performance using observability tools such as SignalFX, Grafana, Prometheus, Splunk, or New Relic to improve system reliability and guide development priorities.
4. 10+ years of active collaboration with product managers, designers, and cross-functional stakeholders to translate product goals into thoughtful technical solutions that improve user experience and system capabilities.

Splunk, a Cisco company, is an Equal Opportunity Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, genetic information, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected basis.