Site Reliability Engineering Technical Leader

Cisco Systems, Inc.; Irvine (CA); On-site; USD 192,000 - 276,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid holidays

Floating holiday

Vacation time

Sick time

Volunteer days

Parental leave

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. is seeking a senior SRE/Cloud Operations Engineer to own the technical strategy for incident response, guide cross‑functional teams, and manage the most complex customer stacks. This role focuses on resilience, automation, and architectural leadership across Splunk Cloud environments.

You will influence engineering, customer success, and release management, driving high‑severity incident prevention and systemic improvements across regions and platforms.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of related experience in SRE, cloud operations, and systems engineering.
• Experience with Linux administration and major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Experience scripting in Python or Go and communicating with senior leadership.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the most senior technical IC, setting technical judgment and operational excellence.
• Own technical strategy for incident response and escalation during P1/P2 events.
• Own complex customer stacks and drive automation and infrastructure architecture decisions.
• Shape operational processes and serve as trusted advisor to Engineering and Customer Success.
• Raise technical standards and develop runbooks and frameworks for resilience.

Skills

13+ years experience in SRE

AWS/GCP/Azure

Python/Go scripting

Communicating with senior leadership

Education

Bachelor's/Master's/PhD with related experience

Tools

Linux administration

Job description

Meet the Team

We are CloudOps— the team that keeps Splunk Cloud running for some of the world's most demanding enterprise customers, blending Site Reliability Engineering, Systems Engineering, and Service Engineering disciplines at a scale very few teams ever get to operate at.

When the hardest incidents hit, when a premier customer's stack is on the line, when a migration needs to land flawlessly — we are the team that gets the call; we are the escalation authority, the technical conscience of Splunk Cloud, and the bridge between customer impact and engineering action. We operate globally across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC, and we thrive on complexity — our engineers own entire customer stacks, drive cross-organizational change, and build the automation and frameworks that make the whole platform more resilient.

If you are the kind of engineer who wants real ownership, not just tickets — who wants to shape how a world‑class SaaS platform operates, mentor the engineers around you, and leave a fingerprint on systems that millions of people depend on — this is the team for you

Your Impact

• You will be the most senior technical individual contributor on the team — setting the bar for technical judgment, architectural thinking, and operational excellence across the organization

• You will own the technical strategy for how the team responds to, learns from, and prevents critical incidents, serving as the designated point of escalation during P1/P2 events and making high-stakes, risk-informed decisions that protect customer uptime and trust

• You will hold deep ownership of the most complex customer stacks and shape the team's automation direction and infrastructure architecture decisions with regional and business-wide impact

• Your insights will directly shape how Splunk Cloud's operational processes evolve, and you will be the trusted counterpart that Engineering, Customer Success, and Release Management turn to when navigating the most demanding customer situations

• You will raise the technical floor of everyone around you — senior engineers will calibrate their judgment against yours, and the frameworks you build will outlast any single incident

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelors + 12 years of related experience, or Masters + 8 years of related experience, or PhD + 5 years of related experience.

• 7+ years of experience in SRE, cloud operations, and systems engineering with Linux administration

• 6+ years of hands‑on experience across AWS, GCP, or Azure;

• 5+ years of experience in at least one scripting or automation language such as Python or Go/golang;

• 5+ years of experience communicating across engineering, customer‑facing, and senior leadership audiences

• 4+ years experience leading post‑mortems and root cause analysis for high‑severity events driving systemic improvements, closing process gaps

Preferred Qualifications

• Demonstrated track record of managing high‑severity customer escalations and resolving critical production issues across major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), with enterprise‑scale experience spanning architecture, deployment, infrastructure changes, migrations, and operational management — including the ability to manage multiple concurrent high‑priority escalations with composure and sound judgment.

• Deep technical ownership of premier and strategic enterprise customer environments, with experience providing authoritative guidance on complex configurations, upgrades, and feature rollouts, while partnering with Account Managers and cross‑functional stakeholders to translate customer insights into measurable improvements to the cloud service experience.

• Extensive background in Linux systems administration and advanced expertise in large‑scale distributed systems architecture — with Splunk‑specific knowledge (SPL, indexer clustering, Search Head Clusters, KVStore, and migration patterns at scale) considered a strong asset.

• Proven experience operating and improving monitoring, alerting, and observability platforms (such as Splunk Observability or equivalent technologies), with a demonstrated ability to close operational process and runbook gaps — driving recurrence prevention, not just incident resolution.

• Exceptional communication and technical leadership skills, with the ability to engage credibly across customers, cross‑functional partners, and senior leadership, combined with prior experience in customer‑facing technical advisory roles (Professional Services, Global Services, or Technical Account Management) and a track record of growing senior technical talent without a formal management mandate

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.

• 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 ofunused sick timecarried forward from one calendar yearto 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.