Senior Site Reliability Engineer – Observability

Cisco; Boise (ID); On-site; USD 149,000 - 282,000; Full time

Job summary

Cisco is seeking an experienced Site Reliability Engineer to design, deploy, and operate enterprise observability platforms across cloud-native workloads. You will focus on Kubernetes-based platform workloads, Splunk and ELK stacks, tracing with Tempo/OpenTelemetry, and end-to-end telemetry pipelines.

You will participate in on-call rotation, incident response, and capacity planning, collaborating with security, database, network, and application teams to improve reliability and operational

Qualifications

• 7+ years in Site Reliability Engineering, Platform Engineering, DevOps, or related field.
• Experience with Splunk Enterprise or Splunk Cloud in production.
• Experience building/operating Elasticsearch/ELK, Prometheus, Grafana, and tracing (Tempo/OpenTelemetry).
• IaC experience with Terraform; knowledge of Linux, networking, distributed systems, and operations.
• Programming/scripting in Python, Go, Bash, or similar; on-call troubleshooting ability.

Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, operate, and improve enterprise observability platforms.
• Build/maintain Splunk infrastructure and Kibana dashboards.
• Operate Elasticsearch clusters for log analytics and troubleshooting.
• Develop tracing with Grafana Tempo and OpenTelemetry.
• Create telemetry pipelines for logs, metrics, and traces; publish dashboards and alerts.
• Define instrumentation standards, data quality, retention, and observability patterns.
• Scale/optimize monitoring systems (Prometheus, Grafana, Kafka, Tempo, OpenTelemetry).
• Automate provisioning and upgrades using Terraform and SCM tools.
• Participate in capacity planning, performance tuning, and production readiness reviews.
• Lead or support incident response and root-cause analysis; collaborate across teams.

Skills

SRE best practices

On-call experience

Distributed tracing

Kubernetes

Splunk

Elasticsearch

Grafana/Tempo/OpenTelemetry

Prometheus

Terraform

Ansible

AWS/Azure/GCP

Python/Go/Bash

CI/CD

Incident response

Education

Bachelor's degree or higher

Tools

Splunk

Splunk Cloud

Elasticsearch

Kibana

Grafana

Grafana Tempo

OpenTelemetry

Kafka

Kubernetes

Terraform

Ansible

AWS

Azure

GCP

Python

Go

Bash

Job description

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

Meet the Team

Join the Observability team within Cloud Network Platform Engineering’s Site Reliability Engineering organization. You will help design, build, and operate enterprise observability platforms for logging, metrics, tracing, and alerting across large-scale cloud infrastructure.

This role will contribute to customer-facing production services, with an initial focus on Kubernetes-based platform workloads such as Nextunnel and broader SRE and reliability initiatives over time. You will lead efforts that improve visibility, reduce time to detect and resolve incidents, increase platform reliability, and strengthen operational excellence across Cisco’s cloud environment.

The role includes participation in a shared SRE pager and on-call rotation, production support, and incident response.

Your Impact

• Design, deploy, operate, and continuously improve enterprise observability platforms.
• Build and maintain Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud infrastructure, including indexers, Search Head Clusters, heavy forwarders, deployment servers, and related integrations.
• Deploy and operate large-scale Elasticsearch clusters supporting log analytics, search, and operational troubleshooting.
• Design, deploy, and support distributed tracing platforms using Grafana Tempo and OpenTelemetry.
• Build and maintain end-to-end telemetry pipelines for logs, metrics, and traces.
• Define instrumentation standards, data quality practices, retention policies, and observability patterns.
• Scale and optimize Prometheus, Grafana, Kafka, Tempo, OpenTelemetry, and related monitoring systems.
• Develop dashboards, alerts, analytics, and trace visualizations using Splunk SPL, Grafana, Kibana, and Tempo.
• Establish monitoring and alerting standards that improve service-level visibility and reduce mean time to detect and resolve incidents.
• Automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration, upgrades, and operational processes using Terraform and configuration management tools.
• Participate in capacity planning, performance tuning, upgrades, patching, disaster recovery, and production readiness reviews.
• Troubleshoot complex distributed-systems issues and lead or support incident response and root-cause analysis.
• Partner with platform, application, security, database, and network engineering teams to improve reliability and operational consistency.
• Contribute to shared SRE standards, documentation, runbooks, and engineering best practices.
• Participate in the shared SRE pager and on-call rotation for production services.

Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years of related experience, or Master + 4 years of related experience, or PhD + 1 year of related experience in Site Reliability Engineering, Platform Engineering, DevOps, or a related field.
• Experience administering Splunk Enterprise or Splunk Cloud in a production environment, with solid understanding of Splunk SPL for dashboards and alerts.
• Experience designing, deploying, and operating Elasticsearch or ELK-based platforms, along with Prometheus, Grafana, distributed tracing (Grafana Tempo, OpenTelemetry), and Kafka.
• Experience in Infrastructure as Code using Terraform and understanding of Linux, networking, distributed systems, and production operations.
• Programming or scripting experience in Python, Go, Ruby, Bash, or similar languages, with demonstrated ability to troubleshoot production incidents and participate in on-call support.

Preferred Qualifications

• Splunk certification.
• Experience with Kubernetes and containerized production workloads.
• Experience operating cloud infrastructure in AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Experience with Ansible, Consul, CI/CD pipelines, or service mesh technologies.
• Experience with reliability engineering practices, including SLOs, SLIs, error budgets, capacity planning, and incident management.
• Demonstrated experience implementing and operating modern observability strategies across logs, metrics, and traces.
• Experience supporting FedRAMP, government, or other regulated environments.
• Experience building secure, highly available, and compliant observability platforms.
• Experience leading cross-functional technical initiatives from proposal through implementation.
• Strong communication, collaboration, and problem-solving skills.

Technology Stack

Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Cloud, Elasticsearch, ELK, Kibana, Prometheus, Grafana, Grafana Tempo, OpenTelemetry, Kafka, Kubernetes, Terraform, Ansible, AWS, Azure, GCP, Python, Go, Bash, CI/CD, distributed tracing, and cloud-native infrastructure.

US Requirement

The successful applicant may perform work in FedRAMP High or IL-5 environments and therefore must be a U.S. Person (U.S. citizen or U.S. national). Work must be performed from within the United States.

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 $167,700.00 to $245,200.00 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.

New York City Metro Area

$167,700.00 - $282,000.00

Non-Metro New York State & Washington State

$149,100.00 - $250,900.00

• 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.