Director, Engineering Project & Program Management (Security Escalations)

Cisco•San Jose, CA

4d•$233,900 - $330,400•Remote

About The Position

Splunk is looking for a Director, Engineering Project and Program Management to own and scale our Security Escalation Management (SEM) organization within the Security org. SEM is a human-led coordination and recovery function built to resolve complex customer situations that cut across front-line support, engineering, product, account management, and formal account escalation teams. Recovery means full resolution—that includes driving engineering analysis, code fixes, bug remediation, configuration corrections, workaround validation, and Root Cause Analysis, not just routing a ticket to the right inbox. The team protects customer confidence, absorbs preventable escalation to executive leadership, and surfaces the operational intelligence that helps Splunk's Security leaders make faster, better decisions. This is not a technical support director role. It is a recovery leadership and program management role for someone who runs disciplined operations, influences without authority across a large matrixed organization, and holds a customer outcome standard—including engineering outcomes—that others will follow.

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree or 15+ years of industry experience, preferably in security, technical escalation management, customer support engineering, or technical program management within an enterprise software environment with experience managing managers or senior individual contributors.
4+ years experience running cross-functional teams handling customer concerns involving Engineering, Product, Support, and Sales simultaneously.
4+ years experience setting up and managing intake, routing, and tracking systems at the program level.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with Security products or security operations environments - understanding the technical stakes of a Security outage and the ability to speak credibly to Engineering and Product leaders about resolution risk and timelines.
Demonstrated ability to own a customer recovery program end-to-end, including driving engineering partners to deliver code fixes, patches, or validated workarounds under pressure.
Experience with executive-level reporting, customer-facing summaries, and recovery plans without editorial support.

Responsibilities

Own the SEM charter, operating model, and all customer-facing Security escalation engagements across Splunk's Enterprise Security suite (ES Core, ES Premier, and associated capabilities), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR), Extended Detection and Response (XDR), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA), and related Security products.
Hold final accountability for engagement quality and resolution outcomes: recovery plans, code fix coordination, bug escalation through engineering, workaround validation, customer communication cadence, sentiment, and post-engagement learning.
Drive full-cycle resolution—from intake and triage through engineering partner engagement, fix delivery or validated workaround, and confirmed customer recovery.
Set and enforce the admission model—severity standards, concurrent Priority 1 ceilings, cross-team ownership rules, and handoff protocols including follow-the-sun and after-hours on-call activation.
Partner with the Account Escalation team on formally escalated accounts where SEM owns the Security workstream.
Build and maintain a Sales Intake coordination function: a single, human-supervised channel that fields requests from Sales and leadership, routes them to the correct owner, confirms acceptance, and monitors outcomes through to closure.
Hold engineering teams accountable for analysis, code fixes, and internal Root Cause Analysis (RCA) on SEM-led engagements; track action completion and escalate blockers.
Work directly with Product and Engineering leadership to surface systemic patterns—recurring defects, missing capabilities, or architectural gaps—that generate escalation volume.
Coordinate customer-facing RCAs in partnership with Engineering and Product; ensure they are accurate, timely, and properly reviewed before release.
Deliver a monthly Product Management newsletter covering portfolio state, product and engineering dependencies, blockers, fix status, and patterns across all active and closed engagements.
Run the governance cadence: weekly operations reviews, monthly leadership reviews, periodic program decision gates, and triggered decision huddles.
Build and maintain a success framework tracking Sales Intake health, executive and business issues, customer and engineering outcomes, and operating model performance.
Communicate systemic patterns and engineering decision needs clearly to senior leadership.
Manage and develop a team of Engagement Managers; build the staffing model and hiring plan for long-term operation.
Establish an AI-assistive tooling posture: AI drafts, humans approve; enforce source traceability and ensure no autonomous customer-facing output.
Partner with cross-functional leaders on proactive account nominations, priority conflicts, and escalation disposition.

Benefits

medical, dental and vision insurance
a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution
paid parental leave
short and long-term disability coverage
basic life insurance
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
16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees (non-exempt)
flexible vacation time off program (exempt)
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
annual bonuses
performance-based incentive pay
restricted stock units