Principal Engineer Software (Prisma AIRS Backend - Runtime Security) Santa Clara, California, United States

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 Software Engineer on the Prisma AIRS Runtime Security team, you will serve as a technical visionary and strategic leader shaping the future of AI security. You will partner with executive leadership, product management, UX designers, ML engineers, and cross-functional engineering teams to conceptualize, architect, and deliver enterprise-grade, cutting-edge solutions for the Prisma AIRS Runtime Security product. You will be at the vanguard of innovation for an industry-defining product in the rapidly evolving space of AI Runtime Security. Your responsibilities will transcend feature development to lead continuous performance and efficiency optimizations, enabling high-throughput integrations across AI detection infrastructure and partner engineering teams. You will drive technical excellence across the organization, set architectural standards, and act as a force multiplier by mentoring other engineers in the team.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead cross-functional collaboration with Product Management, SRE, ML, and Quality Engineering teams to deliver new, enterprise-grade security as a service offerings in a timely fashion.
• Tackle complex, ambiguous technical challenges across system boundaries, translating high-level product and security vision into resilient, production-ready backend architectures.
• Proactively identify technical bottlenecks and scaling opportunities, driving continuous performance and efficiency optimizations to maximize throughput, lower latency, and streamline resource utilization at scale.
• Evangelize and implement modern engineering best practices, including agentic coding workflows and spec-driven development within the team.
• Lead the architectural design and execution of large-scale enterprise systems with model serving infrastructure, ensuring seamless, scalable integration across backend services and partner engineering services.
• Mentor senior and junior engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous learning within the team.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field with 10+ years of relevant industry experience, or a Master's degree with 8+ years of experience
• Deep domain expertise in designing, building, and operating highly scalable, fault-tolerant distributed systems, with exceptional programming skills in Python or Golang.
• Proven track record of designing enterprise-wide Microservices architectures, building, and deploying high-throughput, globally scaled APIs to meet strict SLOs, maximize throughput, and reduce compute costs in production.
• Broad experience architecting cloud-native solutions (GCP preferred), relational/NoSQL databases, container management (Kubernetes), enterprise CI/CD (GitLab, ArgoCD), and full-stack observability (Grafana, Prometheus).
• Demonstrated ability to drive consensus across multi-team boundaries, solve ambiguous technical problems, and mentor senior engineering talent.
• Hands-on experience architecting, building, and deploying complex Agentic workflows, tool-use pipelines, or multi-agent orchestrations.

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.

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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? No. Please note that we will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.