Principal/ Sr Principal Engineer (Cortex Cloud)

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks®, we’re united by a shared mission—to protect our digital way of life. We thrive at the intersection of innovation and impact, solving real-world problems with cutting-edge technology and bold thinking. Here, everyone has a voice, and every idea counts. If you’re ready to do the most meaningful work of your career alongside people who are just as passionate as you are, you’re in the right place.

Who We Are

In order to be the cybersecurity partner of choice, we must trailblaze the path and shape the future of our industry. This is something our employees work at each day and is defined by our values: Disruption, Collaboration, Execution, Integrity, and Inclusion. We weave AI into the fabric of everything we do and use it to augment the impact every individual can have. If you are passionate about solving real-world problems and ideating beside the best and the brightest, we invite you to join us!

We believe collaboration thrives in person. That’s why most of our teams work from the office full time, with flexibility when it’s needed. This model supports real-time problem-solving, stronger relationships, and the kind of precision that drives great outcomes.

Job Summary

As a Principal/ Senior Principal Software Engineer at Cortex Cloud, you will serve as a primary technical architect and visionary for our core communication infrastructure. This role is focused on the critical server-side backbone that facilitates high-scale bidirectional communication between our cloud services and client-side applications.

You will be responsible for the architectural integrity of systems that receive massive data inflows from the field and reliably broadcast intelligence back to millions of endpoints. This is a high-impact leadership role requiring a blend of deep technical mastery in distributed systems and the ability to influence technical strategy across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Architectural Strategy & Vision: Define and drive the multi-year technical roadmap for our server-side communication infrastructure, ensuring the platform remains resilient and performant under extreme load.
• High-Scale Communication Infrastructure: Lead the design and implementation of backend systems optimized for receiving high-scale data from client-side apps and distributing data back to a vast ecosystem of endpoints.
• Technical Leadership & Influence: Act as a force multiplier by providing technical guidance to multiple engineering teams, aligning them on shared protocols, architectural standards, and communication patterns.
• Drive Engineering Excellence: Champion a culture of high engineering rigor, focusing on deep observability, low-latency data distribution, and runtime stability for mission-critical production environments.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Product Management, Infrastructure, and Client-Side Engineering teams to evaluate technical trade-offs, mitigate risks, and ensure seamless end-to-end data flow.
• Innovation & Prototyping: Spearhead the evaluation of emerging technologies and lead "proof of concept" initiatives for next-generation transport layers and messaging paradigms.
• Technical Mentorship: Invest in the growth of Senior and Staff engineers through deep-dive design reviews, code audits, and hands-on pair programming on the most critical paths.
• Strategic Customer Engagement: Support the business by leading technical deep dives with strategic customers, translating complex architectural concepts into actionable confidence for our partners.
  
  

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• 8+/10+ years of software engineering experience with a proven track record of delivering robust, high-scale distributed systems.
• Server-Side Mastery: Deep expertise in systems-level programming and modern backend languages (e.g., Go, Python) with a focus on building scalable server-side infrastructure.
• Cloud Native Foundations: Extensive experience designing, deploying, and operating large-scale architectures on GCP, AWS, or Azure, including strong knowledge of Kubernetes, Docker and Helm.
• Bidirectional Data Flow: Proven ability to architect systems that handle high-concurrency data ingestion and wide-scale data distribution/broadcasting.
• Systemic Problem Solving: Demonstrated experience in profiling, debugging, and optimizing complex distributed systems to eliminate performance bottlenecks.
• Influence & Communication: Exceptional ability to communicate complex technical concepts to both highly technical peers and non-technical stakeholders.
  
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Data Platform Expertise: Familiarity with architecting solutions using large-scale data platforms such as BigQuery, MongoDB, and MySQL.
• High-Performance Caching: Hands-on experience with in-memory data stores and acceleration technologies like Redis, Dragonfly, or similar high-throughput caching layers.
• Event-Driven Architecture: Deep understanding of Event-Driven systems and asynchronous messaging patterns to ensure decoupled and scalable service interactions.
• Modern Tooling: Experience leveraging AI-assisted development tools (Gemini, Claude) to optimize the SDLC and automate complex testing/generation tasks.
• Advanced Degree: B.Sc., M.Sc., or Ph.D. in Computer Science or a related technical field.
  
  

Our Commitment

We’re trailblazers that dream big, 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 accommodations@paloaltonetworks.com.

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.

Is role eligible for Immigration Sponsorship? No. Please note that we will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.