Senior Staff Engineer Software, Backend

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 About the Role We are seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to join our Machine Identity Security team, focused on backend systems that power the control plane of our platform. In this role, you will design, build, and evolve scalable backend services, APIs, and integrations that enable secure machine identity and certificate lifecycle management at scale. You will work on high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems supporting large-scale request volumes and real-time system interactions. You will play a key role in developing control plane capabilities that support machine identity lifecycle management across cloud, hybrid, and enterprise environments. This includes building APIs, service-to-service interactions, integrations, and backend systems that are secure, reliable, and scalable. As a Senior Staff Engineer, you will serve as a technical leader within the team, owning critical backend services and platform capabilities. You will drive the design and delivery of complex technical initiatives, contribute to architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and partner cross-functionally to build scalable and secure machine identity solutions. Responsibilities Design, develop, and maintain backend services and APIs that power the Machine Identity Security control plane Lead the technical design and implementation of scalable, reliable, and extensible backend systems Own the architecture and technical execution of key backend services and platform capabilities from design through production operation Build and maintain integrations between the control plane and external systems and tools (e.g., Terraform, Ansible, enterprise platforms) Design and operate distributed systems supporting large-scale, multi-tenant SaaS environments Optimize backend services for performance, scalability, reliability, observability, and operational efficiency Partner closely with frontend, platform, product, and security teams to design APIs and service interfaces that support machine identity workflows Drive engineering best practices around service design, API development, testing, observability, resiliency, and operational excellence Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues across distributed systems and services Lead complex technical initiatives within your domain and contribute to architecture discussions across related services and components Provide technical leadership through design reviews, code reviews, mentoring, and collaboration with engineers across the team Drive operational excellence through monitoring, performance tuning, reliability improvements, and incident response Contribute to improvements in development workflows, CI/CD pipelines, testing practices, and engineering standards Help evolve engineering practices that incorporate modern development tooling responsibly, with attention to security, correctness, and maintainability Qualifications Qualifications Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience 5+ years of professional software engineering experience building backend services and distributed systems Strong experience building backend services and APIs using Java OR Go Experience designing and operating distributed systems and microservices architectures Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), ideally in SaaS environments Strong system design skills, including API design, scalability, reliability, performance optimization, and fault tolerance Experience building and operating production systems under real-world load, including concurrency, throughput, and distributed system challenges Experience building APIs, SDKs, or integrations consumed by internal and external customers Experience with messaging, event-driven systems, or streaming platforms such as Kafka Experience with CI/CD, containerization (Docker), and orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes Experience designing and building platform services, control planes, developer-facing APIs, or infrastructure-related software is highly desirable Familiarity with identity, authentication, authorization, certificate management, or security-related systems is a plus Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical projects and drive delivery across multiple stakeholders Experience mentoring engineers and contributing to technical decision-making within a team or domain Strong problem-solving, communication, and collaboration skills Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, highly collaborative engineering environment and work in a hybrid capacity 3 days a week from HQ in Santa Clara, CA Compensation Disclosure The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, experience, and work location. For candidates who receive an offer at the posted level, the starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/com-missioned roles) is expected to be the annual range listed below. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here. $126,000.00 - $204,500.00/yr 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 View email address on click.appcast.io. 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?: Yes Please use this form to provide us with information that will help direct your request and find your data in all of our systems