Distinguished Engineer-Data Platforms

Reporting to CTO

Location: Remote West Coast Hours

A little about us

Splunk is here to build a safer and more resilient digital world. We’re proud to say that we’re the key to enterprise resilience for more than 11,000 enterprise organizations that use our Unified Security and Observability Platform to keep their systems secure and reliable. We’re also especially proud of our award-winning culture and our regular appearance on those “Best Places to Work” lists.

We are a company filled with people who are passionate about our product and seek to deliver the best experience for our customers and users. At Splunk, we’re committed to our strong sense of purpose to deliver "aha" moments for our customers with their data. We want to combine this customer value, with building great products, having fun, and importantly, delivering success as a team.

If you end up joining us, we’ll only ask you one thing: bring your whole, authentic self, what we call your million data points. So bring your work experience, problem-solving skills and talent, of course, but also bring your joy, your passion and all the things that make you, you. Because when you feel free to be you, it makes it a lot easier for us to be us.

Role:

As a Distinguished Engineer focusing on Storage & Indexing technology, you will be diving both deep and broad across the Splunk architecture and involved in all key products we ship while being the domain expert in the storage and indexing layer. Your primary role will be to ensure the Splunk indexing and storage architecture, as exposed through the main Splunk Enterprise product, are evolving to meet the scaling considerations of our largest customersThis role will navigate the complexity of the Splunk Enterprise install base to deliver an architecture and evolution of our technology to support our largest business priorities. This software runs in both air-gapped customer managed environments, to fully SaaS cloud environments, and those that span both. It scales down to gigabytes of data across a single machine, to many Petabytes per day across thousands.

This role partners deeply with peer leadership made up of other Distinguished Engineers, Senior Directors, and Vice Presidents across organizations to set the strategic direction for Splunk Platform and holding teams accountable for executing on the plan. As a leader in this role you will need to be an expert at influencing without authority, engaging with peer leaders to align product-wide strategies.

This isn’t an architectural astronaut role - you will be expected to get deep enough into the system to write and review production code. Your designs and direction should be grounded in the reality of the code, not the boxes in a presentation. At the same time, this isn’t a solo programmer role - you will be expected to lead, to present to executive audiences, and to influence the broader organization in alignment with Platform priorities.

In short, you will be the connector between the business strategy and the technical strategy, and have a direct impact on the success of Splunk in the coming decade.

This role requires a technically minded and outcome focused leader who can lead large teams of engineers effectively through being approachable, humble, and very technically deep.

Day to day life in this role will include:

Conducting architectural reviews of designs affecting not only the Data Platform area, but the across dependent peer teams as part of the DE team. The goal of these reviews is to simultaneously hold a high architectural bar while also providing a safe environment for critique and learning.
Partnering with Product leads to match strategic product vision with engineering reality
Creating architectural designs with the clarity for the organization to see the destination, but with enough space for other engineers to help build the details.
Partnering with engineering and technical leaders to ensure efficient execution of the teams.
One-on-one coaching and mentoring of engineers both inside and outside your teams.
Diving deep into the codebase on your own non-critical-path coding projects.
Code reviews, to both guide engineers and set a high standard for quality.

Responsibilities:

The responsibilities of this role include:

Working with and understanding the Splunk architecture and product, in depth and in all deployment modes.
Deep understanding of the development experience for line engineers in your areas of ownership.
Understanding the business context in which we operate, and the current strengths and limitations of our system within that context.
Building and executing a strategic technical plan for the future of the Data Platform technology area, that both builds on the technology that makes Splunk unique while tactically dropping the technical debt accrued.
Partnering with Product and Engineering Leads to ensure the technology and organization matches the needs of the product strategy long term.
Mentoring and teaching other engineers through both one-on-one and in large team meetings.
Grounding your understanding of customer needs through regular discussion with customers and the field. While you’re not in a product management or customer facing role, you will need to partner with customers and non-Engineering counterparts regularly.

Requirements:

Please note that the following requirements are flexible and should be viewed as guidelines rather than strict criteria. We understand that no candidate may meet every qualification listed.

We anticipate that the skills, competencies, and experiences outlined below will generally align with someone who has approximately 15-20 years of experience in building large software systems. However, we recognize that years of experience are merely a proxy for the depth of knowledge, abilities, and hands-on expertise that a candidate may bring to the role.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

Required: Strong knowledge of how data intensive applications are constructed and run efficiently.
Required: Experience leading diverse teams across multiple locations
Required: Strong software development experience across large codebases
Required: Knowledge of indexing & storage technology
Preferred: Best practices and state of the art for delivering software both on-premise and in the cloud. This role could be considered living in the Hybrid space, so both are important.
Preferred: Experience leading large scale change (of mindsets, technologies, or tooling) in codebases and organizations.
Preferred: Microservices and monolith based development
Preferred: Web protocols and distributed systems

Competencies:

Helping people grow their skills and abilities to meet their career goals
Building psychologically safe environments, where learning is encouraged and failure is not punished.
Clear and direct communication
Constant learning

Background experiences:

Experience in technically leading projects requiring teams of 100+ Engineers
Experience in large scale storage and indexing systems.
Full time software development
Experience working within complex projects with stakeholders across an organization, building trust, and communicating such that there are few surprises.
Experience diving deep technically into both on-premise and cloud software

Splunk is an Equal Opportunity Employer: At Splunk, we believe creating a culture of belonging isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s also the smart thing. We prioritize diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging to ensure our employees are supported to bring their best, most authentic selves to work where they can thrive. Qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, physical or mental disability or medical condition, genetic information, veteran status, or any other consideration made unlawful by federal, state, or local laws. We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements.

Note:

Base Pay Range

SF Bay Area, Seattle Metro, and New York City Metro Area

Base Pay Range: $282,400.00 - 388,300.00 per year

California (excludes SF Bay Area), Washington (excludes Seattle Metro), Washington DC Metro, and Massachusetts

Base Pay Range: $254,160.00 - 349,470.00 per year

All other cities and states excluding California, Washington, Massachusetts, New York City Metro Area and Washington DC Metro Area.

Base Pay Range: $225,920.00 - 310,640.00 per year

Splunk provides flexibility and choice in the working arrangement for most roles, including remote and/or in-office roles. We have a market-based pay structure which varies by location. Please note that the base pay range is a guideline and for candidates who receive an offer, the base pay will vary based on factors such as work location as set out above, as well as the knowledge, skills and experience of the candidate. In addition to base pay, this role is eligible for incentive compensation and may be eligible for equity or long-term cash awards.

Benefits are an important part of Splunk's Total Rewards package. This role is eligible for a competitive benefits package which includes medical, dental, vision, a 401(k) plan and match, paid time off and much more! Learn more about our comprehensive benefits and wellbeing offering at https://splunkbenefits.com.

Apply Now

Splunk's Hiring Practices

^{Splunk turns machine data into answers. Organizations use market-leading Splunk solutions with machine learning to solve their toughest IT, Internet of Things and security challenges.}

^{We value diversity, equity, and inclusion at Splunk and are an equal employment opportunity employer. Qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, physical or mental disability or medical condition, genetic information, veteran status, or any other consideration made unlawful by federal, state, or local laws. We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. Click here to review the US Department of Labor’s EEO is The Law notice. Please click here to review Splunk’s Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement. If you need assistance or an accommodation to apply or during the hiring process, please let us know by completing our Accommodation Request form.}

^{Splunk also has policies in place to protect the personal information candidates disclose to us as part of the application process. Please click here to review Splunk’s Career Site Privacy Policy.

Splunk does not discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. Please click here to review Splunk’s Pay Transparency Nondiscrimination Provision.

Splunk is committed to the health and safety of our employees and customers. We comply with local, state/territory, and federal regulations to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the countries in which we operate. Splunk provides reasonable medical, religious, or other legally required accommodations for eligible employees.

Splunk is also committed to providing access to all individuals who are seeking information from our website. Any individual using assistive technology (such as a screen reader, Braille reader, etc.) who experiences difficulty accessing information on any part of Splunk’s website should send comments to accessiblecareers@splunk.com. Please include the nature of the accessibility problem and your e-mail or contact address. If the accessibility problem involves a particular page, the message should include the URL of that page.

Splunk doesn't accept unsolicited agency resumes and won't pay fees to any third-party agency or firm that doesn't have a signed agreement with Splunk.}