Senior Director Software Engineering (Cortex Cloud)

Company Description

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks® everything starts and ends with our mission:

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.
Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. We are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are done, and we’re looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of cybersecurity as we are.

Who We Are

We take our mission of protecting the digital way of life seriously. We are relentless in protecting our customers and we believe that the unique ideas of every member of our team contributes to our collective success. Our values were crowdsourced by employees and are brought to life through each of us everyday - from disruptive innovation and collaboration, to execution. From showing up for each other with integrity to creating an environment where we all feel included.

As a member of our team, you will be shaping the future of cybersecurity. We work fast, value ongoing learning, and we respect each employee as a unique individual. Knowing we all have different needs, our development and personal wellbeing programs are designed to give you choice in how you are supported. This includes our FLEXBenefits wellbeing spending account with over 1,000 eligible items selected by employees, our mental and financial health resources, and our personalized learning opportunities - just to name a few!

Job Description

Your Career

At Palo Alto Networks, we lead the way in cybersecurity innovation. Our Cortex XDR and Cloud Workload Protection (CWP) product offers a holistic solution that protects your entire digital infrastructure, from user endpoints to cloud environments. We deliver comprehensive, end-to-end security by monitoring and analyzing everything—from endpoint activity and user behavior to network traffic, cloud workloads, and containers. Through continuous threat detection and proactive incident response, we offer a unified approach to Extended Detection and Response (XDR), ensuring the identification, analysis, and prioritization of security risks across your entire enterprise.

As the Software Engineering Sr. Director, you will lead multiple backend engineering teams and groups dedicated to building and maintaining our industry-leading cybersecurity products. You will define and drive the vision and strategy for software development, ensuring the highest delivery standards of quality, security, and scalability. In close collaboration with product management, platform teams, and security researchers, you will guide the delivery of innovative, reliable solutions that address the evolving needs of our customers. A key part of your mission will be to harness AI-embedding AI-powered capabilities into both our products and engineering practices to secure the future of software development.

Your Impact:

Engineering Leadership: Lead and mentor BE engineering teams, driving recruitment, retention, and talent development. Foster a culture of collaboration and innovation.
Product Development: Oversee the design and delivery of secure, scalable software solutions, ensuring best practices in security throughout the development lifecycle.
Collaboration: Work closely with product, security research, endpoint engineering and platform teams to align engineering with business goals and customer needs.

Qualifications

Your Experience

15+ years of Software Engineering experience
8+ years of managing multiple software engineering teams
Experience with high scale & critical systems backend engineering.
Demonstrated ability to lead through organizational change, balancing strategy with execution.
Proven track record of delivering complex, secure, and scalable SaaS products.
B.Sc. or M.Sc. in Computer Science, Software and Computer Engineering, or equivalent military experience required
Detailed oriented with an ability to drill down into the technical bits and bytes while enabling your employees to deliver.

Advantage:

Experience in the cybersecurity domain, with a solid understanding of security.
Additional Information

Additional Information

The Team

Our team is a group of talented and mission-driven backend engineers who build and scale the core of Cortex XDR and Cloud Workload Protection. We work in close collaboration with product, platform, and research teams to deliver advanced cybersecurity solutions that protect organizations worldwide. The team thrives on solving complex challenges, driving innovation with AI-powered capabilities, and ensuring the highest standards of performance, security, and reliability.

Our Commitment

We’re problem solvers that take risks and challenge cybersecurity’s status quo. It’s simple: we can’t accomplish our mission without diverse teams innovating, together.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all qualified individuals with a disability. If you require assistance or accommodation due to a disability or special need, please contact us at [email protected].

Palo Alto Networks is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Our Commitment

We’re problem solvers that take risks and challenge cybersecurity’s status quo. It’s simple: we can’t accomplish our mission without diverse teams innovating, together.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all qualified individuals with a disability. If you require assistance or accommodation due to a disability or special need, please contact us at [email protected].

Palo Alto Networks is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.