Splunk Core Engineer

Location: Houston, Texas (onsite)
Start Date: 1st June 2026
Six-month contract
Salary $80,000 - $100,000 per annum

We are hiring a Splunk Engineer with deep, hands‑on experience owning and operating Splunk end‑to‑end in a commercial enterprise environment. This role is suited to someone who has worked on small, high‑impact teams, taken broad responsibility for the Splunk platform, and is comfortable making architectural, operational, and engineering decisions without reliance on large, highly siloed teams.

We are specifically looking for candidates with strong ingest management experience, deep involvement in data onboarding, and ownership of the entire ingestion and processing pipeline, including Edge Processors and Ingest Actions.

Key Responsibilities
Data Ingestion, Onboarding & Pipeline Development
Own and manage Splunk data ingestion end‑to‑end, with a strong emphasis on ingest management, Edge Processors, and Ingest Actions
Design, implement, and optimize ingestion pipelines for diverse enterprise data sources
Lead and execute onboarding of new log and metric sources, ensuring data quality, normalization, and performance
Work closely with application, infrastructure, and security teams to support new use cases and data requirements

Index Management, Performance Monitoring & Optimization
Design and manage index strategy, retention policies, and storage optimization
Monitor platform health, throughput, and latency, proactively identifying performance bottlenecks
Lead tuning and optimization of Splunk environments at scale

Patch & Platform Lifecycle Management
Own Splunk platform lifecycle, including version upgrades, patching, and compatibility planning
Evaluate new Splunk features and capabilities and drive adoption where appropriate
Ensure platform reliability, stability, and security across environments

Troubleshooting & Incident Response
Serve as a senior escalation point for complex platform issues
Diagnose and resolve ingestion, indexing, search, and performance issues
Lead incident response efforts related to the Splunk platform and data pipelines

Documentation & Knowledge Sharing
Create and maintain high‑quality technical documentation for platform architecture, ingest pipelines, and operational procedures
Share knowledge and best practices across teams, mentoring less experienced engineers
Contribute to continuous improvement of standards and operating models

Required Experience & Skills
Splunk Expertise
2 years Splunk architecture experience
Strong, demonstrable experience with ingest management, including: Edge Processors, Ingest Actions
Data routing, filtering, and transformation at ingest
Proven track record onboarding and managing a wide range of data sources
Experience owning Splunk in environments where responsibilities were not heavily divided across large teams

Technical & Design Skills
Broad experience across Splunk platform operations, not just a single functional area
Solid foundation in cloud technologies, containerization, and modern infrastructure patterns
Experience of working Linux systems
Scripting and automation skills (e.g., Python, shell, or similar)
Hands-on experience with Salt automation for creating, editing, and maintaining Splunk lookup tables
Strong understanding of modern system design, integration patterns, and automation principles

Problem Solving & Communication
Advanced troubleshooting and critical thinking skills, able to go beyond runbooks
Comfortable operating with ambiguity and designing pragmatic solutions
Strong written and verbal communication skills, able to explain complex concepts clearly to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders

Experience Environment
Recent experience in commercial enterprise environments is strongly preferred
Candidates whose experience is primarily limited to government or highly specialized Splunk environments may not be a fit
Background working on small teams with broad ownership is essential
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