This role is part of a high-impact engagement with one of our most strategic global technology clients — a world leader in enterprise networking, cybersecurity, and observability platforms. As a Principal Technical Lead, you will be a cornerstone of Cognizant's centre of excellence for Splunk, shaping delivery standards and driving platform excellence at scale.About the RoleWe are seeking a Principal Technical Lead to own critical escalations, drive platform reliability, and lead a high-performing team of Splunk engineers. This is a senior leadership role that combines deep technical expertise with strategic influence — you will shape how the team operates, how customers are served, and how the platform evolves.What You Will Do • Lead critical technical escalations across Splunk platform environments, ensuring timely and effective resolution of customer-impacting incidents • Provide hands-on technical support to Senior Engineers, Technical Leads, and cross-functional teams for complex infrastructure and cloud issues • Engage directly with enterprise customers and stakeholders to drive incident resolution and maintain confidence • Conduct deep-dive RCA for high-severity incidents and develop corrective and preventive action plans • Analyse diagnostic logs, telemetry, traces, packet captures, and performance metrics • Validate product updates, patches, and feature enhancements; revise enablement agendas accordingly • Drive automation, process optimisation, and proactive monitoring initiatives • Develop and maintain technical runbooks, SOPs, and escalation handling guidelines • Collaborate with Product Engineering, SRE, DevOps, and Operations teams to improve platform stability • Organise technical enablement sessions, knowledge-sharing workshops, and escalation review meetings • Mentor engineers and foster a culture of technical excellence and operational disciplineWhat You Bring • Deep expertise in search performance, indexing, federated search, search heads, and indexers • Strong knowledge of data onboarding, parsing, dashboards, field extractions, lookups, and event correlation • Proficiency in Python and Shell scripting for automation • Experience with incident response, escalation management, and RCA methodologies • Strong stakeholder communication and customer management skillsTechnical Skills Splunk Enterprise · SPL · Linux · AWS/Azure/GCP · Python · Shell Scripting · Monitoring & Observability Tools · JIRA · GitCertifications (Preferred) Splunk Certified Architect/Admin · AWS Certified Solutions Architect · Azure Administrator/Architect Job SummaryThis senior infrastructure developer role focuses on designing administering and optimizing Splunk platforms to support enterpriseGood experience in Python monitoring observability and analytics needs in a hybrid work environment. The profile involves implementing robust logging standards maintaining platform reliability and collaborating with cross functional teams across industry essential domains to enable secure and data driven operations. Responsibilities • Administer Splunk platform components to ensure stable indexers search heads deployment servers and forwarders that consistently support enterprise monitoring needs.Good expireince in Python • Configure data onboarding pipelines in Splunk by designing efficient sourcetypes field extractions and indexing strategies that improve query performance and data quality. • Develop reusable Splunk searches dashboards and reports that provide actionable insights and help stakeholders monitor infrastructure health and application performance. • Optimize Splunk storage and retention policies by tuning index configurations and archive strategies that balance performance compliance and cost efficiency. • Implement proactive alerting solutions in Splunk that detect anomalies capacity risks and service degradations before they impact business operations. • Troubleshoot Splunk search performance issues by analyzing search patterns identifying inefficient queries and recommending tuning improvements. • Collaborate with infrastructure and application teams to establish logging standards naming conventions and data models that strengthen observability across environments. • Document Splunk configurations runbooks and operational procedures that help ensure consistent deployments and faster incident resolution. • Coordinate with security and compliance teams to align Splunk configurations with organizational governance requirements and audit readiness. • Enhance automation around Splunk administration tasks using scripts or tools that streamline onboarding configuration and maintenance activities. • Participate in incident investigations by using Splunk data to identify root causes verify hypotheses and recommend corrective actions. • Contribute to continuous improvement initiatives by analyzing usage patterns proposing new dashboards and refining metrics that support organizational goals. • Engage with industry essential domain stakeholders to translate operational requirements into Splunk based monitoring solutions that improve service reliability. Qualifications • Demonstrate experience of at least three years as Splunk administrator managing enterprise deployments and supporting production environments. • Apply strong knowledge of infrastructure concepts such as servers networks and storage to design resilient Splunk architectures that operate efficiently. • Use understanding of industry essential domains to contextualize observability requirements and build dashboards that reflect critical business processes. • Show proficiency in search processing language to craft optimized queries complex alerts and meaningful visualizations that guide operational decisions. • Exhibit familiarity with scripting or automation tools that assist in configuration management and repetitive administrative tasks within Splunk. • Display good communication skills to collaborate with technical and non technical partners in a hybrid work model and document outcomes clearly. • Utilize problem solving capabilities and analytical thinking to diagnose Splunk issues coordinate with support teams and implement sustainable fixes. About Cognizant: Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH) is an AI Builder and technology services provider, bridging the gap between AI investment and enterprise value by building full-stack AI solutions for our clients. Our deep industry, process and engineering expertise enables us to build an organization’s unique context into technology systems that amplify human potential, drive tangible outcomes and keep global enterprises ahead in a fast-changing world. See how at cognizant.ai or @cognizant. Additional employment information Compensation information is accurate as of the date of this posting. Cognizant reserves the right to modify this information at any time, subject to applicable law. Applicants may be required to attend interviews in person or by video conference. In addition, candidates may be required to present their current state or government issued ID during each interview. Cognizant is an equal opportunity employer. Your application and candidacy will not be considered based on race, color, sex, religion, creed, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.