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Principal Product Manager

• Splunk AI Foundations

Splunk is looking for a Principal Product Manager to join our AI Foundations Team! We are building the core models and tools that power our entire product portfolio for global customers. In this role, you will help define the roadmap for high-scale AI, focusing on domain-specific models, agentic protocols, and orchestration platforms.

The Team

The Splunk AI Foundations Organization delivers Gen AI and ML-based solutions that enhance Cisco and Splunk products. We introduce new offerings that help customers deploy AI at scale responsibly, keeping security and observability at the center of every model.

Your Impact

As a Principal Product Manager for the Splunk AI Foundations Team, you will be the architect of the "AI Engine Room" that powers the future of Splunk and Cisco’s joint vision for AI-native digital resilience. You will be instrumental in crafting the core substrate of our platform—developing the foundational models, protocols, and orchestration tools that not only drive our internal Platform, Security, and Observability portfolios but are also shipped as a world-class platform to our global customers and developer ecosystem.

In this role, you will lead the productization of domain-specific foundation models (such as the C isco Time Series Model). By building agentic workflow frameworks, you will empower a new era of "self-driving" operations where autonomous agents collaborate with humans to investigate and remediate incidents in real-time. Your work will bridge the gap between groundbreaking AI research and production-grade enterprise software, ensuring that every AI interaction is performant, scalable, and built on a foundation of Responsible AI and trust.

What You’ll Do

• Drive AI Platform Strategy: Lead the roadmap for AI foundational elements, including tools, frameworks, APIs and SDKs used by both internal teams and external customers.

• Develop Specialized Models: Oversee the shipping of models optimized for machine data, ensuring they outperform general-purpose alternatives through rigorous evaluation.

• Build Connectivity: Standardize AI skills for the Cisco products using protocols like MCP to create universal connectors for AI workflows.

• Enable Agentic Workflows: Develop tools that allow developers to build autonomous agents capable of reasoning and planning across complex data environments.

• Responsible AI & Governance:

Advance the AI frontier responsibly by engaging with Compliance, Legal, and Finance to ensure products meet ethical AI standards, data privacy, and security while addressing financial goals (e.g., cloud margin).

• GTM & Ecosystem:

Partner with Product Marketing and Sales to package these foundational capabilities for external customers, including pricing, positioning, and developer documentation.

• Customer Advocacy:

Engage deeply with customers to develop insights into what is possible and uncover unarticulated needs to ensure customer success.

Qualifications

• Bachelors + 12 years of related experience, or Masters + 8 years of related experience, or PhD + 5 years of related experience, or
  equivalent related work experience in Product Management, with a focus on prioritizing AI/ML platform products.

• Technical Depth: Solid understanding of AI/ML architectures (LLMs, Deep Learning), training, and evaluation. Familiarity with Vector DBs and Agentic Workflows.

• Data Skills: Proficiency in SQL and Python for data analysis, along with experience in large-scale data pipelines.

• Growth Mindset: Proven ability to drive adoption for developer-centric products and scale AI solutions from concept to market.

• Collaborative Leadership: Experience working with early design partners to validate and iterate on new features.

• Communication: Ability to translate complex AI roadmaps into clear strategic narratives for partners.

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in an AI related technical field like CS, Data Science, or Engineering.

Preferred Skills

• Advanced degree (Master's or Ph.D.) in a quantitative field or an MBA.

• Hands-on experience with the end-to-end model development lifecycle.

• Knowledge of MLOps principles within networking or cybersecurity.

• Experience building AI ecosystems or managing partnerships with hyperscalers and model providers.

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 $176,100.00 to $250,400.00 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.

The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:

New York City Metro Area:

$191,400.00 - $323,600.00

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

$176,100.00 - $287,900.00

• 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.