Principal Visa Sponsorship Jobs in Washington
Principal visa sponsorship jobs in Washington are concentrated in the Seattle metro, where major employers like Microsoft, Amazon, and Boeing regularly sponsor H-1B visa and other work visas for senior technical and leadership roles. The state's dense concentration of technology, aerospace, and research institutions makes it one of the most active sponsorship markets in the country.
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Get Access To All JobsThe application window is expected to close on: 08/07/2026. Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.
Meet the Team
Cisco and Splunk are building a safer, more resilient digital world. Organizations around the globe rely on our security and observability platform to keep their systems secure, available, and performing at their best. The Analytics and Search organization powers one of the most important capabilities of the Splunk Platform. Our teams build the technology that helps customers explore, understand, and act on massive amounts of machine data. As AI becomes an increasingly important part of the platform, we continue to evolve our search technologies to support new ways of discovering insights and solving problems.
Your Impact
We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer who enjoys solving difficult technical problems, working across teams, and helping shape the future of search at Splunk. In this role, you'll work with engineers, architects, and product partners across Cisco and Splunk to build technologies that serve thousands of customers around the world.
- Design distributed search and analytics systems that are reliable, scalable, and easy to evolve.
- Partner with engineering and product teams to turn long-term technical vision into practical solutions.
- Guide complex engineering efforts from early design through delivery and ongoing improvements.
- Improve the performance, reliability, and efficiency of the Splunk search platform.
- Help teams simplify existing systems while building reusable platform capabilities.
- Work across organizations to solve technical challenges and make thoughtful engineering decisions.
- Share knowledge through design reviews, mentoring, and technical discussions.
- Partner with customers and support teams to address important production issues and learn from real-world usage.
- Contribute to technical strategy, hiring, and the engineering culture across the organization.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree with 15+ years of experience, Master's degree with 12+ years, PhD with 10+ years, or equivalent practical experience.
- Experience designing and building large-scale distributed systems or data platforms.
- Experience developing software that operates reliably in production.
- Experience with distributed computing, search technologies, data processing, or query execution.
- Experience working with cloud, hybrid, or on-premises platforms.
- Experience with C++, SQL, or cloud technologies such as AWS.
- Experience with search engines, distributed query processing, or large-scale analytics platforms.
Preferred Qualifications
- Ability to collaborate across multiple engineering teams and influence technical direction.
- Strong communication skills, including explaining technical concepts to different audiences.
- Experience mentoring engineers and supporting technical growth across teams.
- Knowledge of indexing, query optimization, databases, or information retrieval.
- Familiarity with Spark, Presto, Athena, or similar distributed data systems.
- Experience building cloud-native services.
- Experience with observability, security, analytics, or similar enterprise platforms.
- Experience working directly with enterprise customers.
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 $222,900.00 to $295,200.00 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:
$231,400.00 - $381,600.00
Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:
$222,900.00 - $343,600.00
- 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.
The application window is expected to close on: 08/07/2026. Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received.
Meet the Team
Cisco and Splunk are building a safer, more resilient digital world. Organizations around the globe rely on our security and observability platform to keep their systems secure, available, and performing at their best. The Analytics and Search organization powers one of the most important capabilities of the Splunk Platform. Our teams build the technology that helps customers explore, understand, and act on massive amounts of machine data. As AI becomes an increasingly important part of the platform, we continue to evolve our search technologies to support new ways of discovering insights and solving problems.
Your Impact
We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer who enjoys solving difficult technical problems, working across teams, and helping shape the future of search at Splunk. In this role, you'll work with engineers, architects, and product partners across Cisco and Splunk to build technologies that serve thousands of customers around the world.
- Design distributed search and analytics systems that are reliable, scalable, and easy to evolve.
- Partner with engineering and product teams to turn long-term technical vision into practical solutions.
- Guide complex engineering efforts from early design through delivery and ongoing improvements.
- Improve the performance, reliability, and efficiency of the Splunk search platform.
- Help teams simplify existing systems while building reusable platform capabilities.
- Work across organizations to solve technical challenges and make thoughtful engineering decisions.
- Share knowledge through design reviews, mentoring, and technical discussions.
- Partner with customers and support teams to address important production issues and learn from real-world usage.
- Contribute to technical strategy, hiring, and the engineering culture across the organization.
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree with 15+ years of experience, Master's degree with 12+ years, PhD with 10+ years, or equivalent practical experience.
- Experience designing and building large-scale distributed systems or data platforms.
- Experience developing software that operates reliably in production.
- Experience with distributed computing, search technologies, data processing, or query execution.
- Experience working with cloud, hybrid, or on-premises platforms.
- Experience with C++, SQL, or cloud technologies such as AWS.
- Experience with search engines, distributed query processing, or large-scale analytics platforms.
Preferred Qualifications
- Ability to collaborate across multiple engineering teams and influence technical direction.
- Strong communication skills, including explaining technical concepts to different audiences.
- Experience mentoring engineers and supporting technical growth across teams.
- Knowledge of indexing, query optimization, databases, or information retrieval.
- Familiarity with Spark, Presto, Athena, or similar distributed data systems.
- Experience building cloud-native services.
- Experience with observability, security, analytics, or similar enterprise platforms.
- Experience working directly with enterprise customers.
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 $222,900.00 to $295,200.00 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:
$231,400.00 - $381,600.00
Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:
$222,900.00 - $343,600.00
- 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.
Principal Job Roles in Washington
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Search Principal Jobs in WashingtonPrincipal Jobs in Washington: Frequently Asked Questions
Which companies sponsor visas for principals in Washington?
Microsoft and Amazon are among the most active H-1B sponsors for principal-level roles in Washington, particularly in software engineering, product management, and technical program management. Boeing sponsors principals in aerospace and engineering disciplines. Other notable employers include Google's Kirkland office, Expedia, T-Mobile, and a range of biotech firms in the Seattle-Bellevue corridor. Sponsorship activity varies by department and hiring cycle.
Which visa types are most common for principal roles in Washington?
The H-1B is the most common visa for principal roles in Washington, as these positions typically require a specialized bachelor's degree or higher and qualify as specialty occupations. Candidates already holding L-1A or L-1B status through intracompany transfers also fill principal roles at large multinationals. Those with extraordinary ability may pursue O-1A classification, which has no annual cap and is not subject to the H-1B lottery.
How to find principal visa sponsorship jobs in Washington?
Migrate Mate filters job listings specifically by visa sponsorship availability, making it straightforward to browse principal roles in Washington without sorting through positions that don't support international candidates. You can filter by location and job category to surface relevant openings at Seattle-area employers who have an active history of sponsoring work visas for senior individual contributor and leadership positions.
Which cities in Washington have the most principal sponsorship jobs?
Seattle and Bellevue account for the large majority of principal-level sponsorship activity in Washington. Redmond is significant due to Microsoft's global headquarters. Kirkland hosts Google and other mid-size tech companies. Outside the Eastside, Everett and Renton see sponsorship in aerospace through Boeing. For roles in research and education, cities like Pullman and Spokane offer limited but real opportunities through Washington State University and regional employers.
What should international candidates know about principal roles in Washington specifically?
Washington has no state income tax, which affects the overall compensation structure compared to states like California. Principal roles here often sit at the intersection of technical depth and cross-functional leadership, so employers typically expect candidates to demonstrate both domain expertise and influence at scale. The concentration of large tech employers in the Seattle metro means H-1B cap-exempt sponsorship routes are less common here than at universities or nonprofits, so most candidates enter through the standard annual lottery.
What is the prevailing wage for sponsored principal jobs in Washington?
U.S. employers sponsoring a visa must pay at least the prevailing wage, which is what workers in the same role, area, and experience level typically earn. The Department of Labor sets this rate to make sure companies aren't hiring foreign workers simply because they'd accept lower pay than a U.S. worker. It varies by job title, location, and experience. You can look up current prevailing wage rates for any occupation and location using the OFLC Wage Search page.