Phd Software Engineer Jobs in Tennessee (NOW HIRING)

Splunk, a Cisco company, is building a safer, more resilient digital world with an end-to-end, full-stack platform designed for hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The Platform Security team builds andoperatesfoundational security capabilities that protect Splunk services, infrastructure, and customer data at enterprise scale.

Our work spans public key infrastructure, certificate and secrets lifecycle management, service identity, encryption, compliance, zero-trust security, and cryptographic agility across AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, and traditional environments. We combine deep security and distributed systemsexpertisewith the scale and operational excellence of Splunk and Cisco's global engineering capabilities.

We are advancing automation-first and agentic development practices to build secure, well-tested, and developer-friendly platforms. Our systems enable consistentcertificateissuance, rotation, revocation, secret delivery, and service-to-service authentication while supporting evolving requirements such as FedRAMP, TLS 1.3, and post-quantum cryptography.

At Splunk, we are driven by a bold vision to make machine data accessible, usable, and valuable to everyone. We are a team of passionate builders who value technical excellence, customer impact, collaboration, trust, and curiosity. Our work directly influences reliability, scalability, developer productivity, compliance, and customer trust across Splunk.

• Design, build, test, andoperatesecure, scalable platform services that support certificate management,secretsmanagement, service identity, encryption, and zero-trust capabilities across Splunk.

• Apply established software engineering and security best practices to improve the reliability, usability, and operational efficiency of Platform Security products and services.

• Work independently on well-defined initiatives, using guidance from technical and engineering leaders todeterminetheappropriate implementationapproach.

• Lead small-to-medium features from technical design through implementation, testing, deployment, and operational readiness.

• Develop clean, maintainable code and comprehensive unit and integration tests using languages such as Go, C++ or Python.

• Build automation for certificate issuance, renewal, rotation, revocation, secret delivery, and policy enforcement across cloud and Kubernetes environments.

• Contribute to secure multi-cloud capabilities across AWS, GCP, and Azure, ensuring consistent security patterns across deployment environments.

• Apply secure coding practices,participatein threat modeling, andidentifysecurity risks in the design and implementation of new features.

• Use AI-assisted and agentic development practices to improve engineering velocity whilemaintainingappropriate testing, validation, and security guardrails.

• Perform code reviews and provide actionable feedback that improves code quality, security, reliability, and maintainability.

• Troubleshoot complex development and production issues,participatein on-call rotations, and contribute to incident reviews, root-cause analyses, and remediation plans.

• Partner with engineering, infrastructure, compliance, and security teams to deliver capabilities that support requirements such as FedRAMP,mTLS, cryptographic agility, and certificate governance.

• Build productive relationships with peer stakeholders and clearly communicate technical decisions, project progress, risks, and dependencies.

• Monitor service health, reliability, adoption, and operational metrics to identify opportunities for improvement.

• Stay current with developments in cloud security, PKI,secretsmanagement, cryptography, post-quantum readiness, and secure software development practices.

• Serve as a technical resource for less-experienced engineers, share knowledge across teams, and mentor peers or interns asappropriate.

• Identifydelivery risks early and develop practical alternatives or remediation plans to keep projects on track.

• Bachelors + 5 years of related experience, or Masters + 3 years of related experience, or PhD + 0 years of professional software development experience building andoperatingsecure, scalable, production-grade systems.

• Proficiency in C++ or Go programming languages is required, with experience in Python considered an advantage.

• Experience applying AI-assisted or agentic development practices to software engineering, testing, automation, or operational workflows.

• Hands-on experience with public key infrastructure, certificate lifecycle management, certificate authorities, TLS, and mutual TLS.

• Demonstrated knowledgeof cloud security across AWS, GCP, or Azure, with experience supporting multi-cloud and Kubernetes-based environments.

• Knowledge of applied cryptography, key management, encryption, digital signatures, and cryptographic agility.

• Familiarity with security and compliance frameworks such as FedRAMP, including audit evidence, security controls, and boundary documentation.

• Experience building distributed systems, platformservices,RESTAPIs, and automation that reduce operational toil and improve reliability.

• Effectivecommunication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work across engineering, security, compliance, and infrastructure teams.