Sr Staff Data Scientist

Sr Staff Data Scientist

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.

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.

The Team

The Information Technology (IT) team at Palo Alto Networks is a global organization that delivers technology and services to our employees, partners, and customers. We are a team of builders and innovators, focused on enabling the company's digital transformation and growth. We are responsible for the entire technology stack, from infrastructure and applications to data and security. Our mission is to provide a seamless and secure technology experience that empowers our people to do their best work.

Job Summary

We are seeking a versatile Sr Staff Data Scientist to shape our business operations through a unique hybrid of classical machine learning and applied AI. You will tackle diverse, impactful projects, from building predictive models that drive key business decisions to optimizing our emerging AI agentic systems. In this role, you will act as a builder and a strategic partner, translating business challenges into data science solutions and presenting findings to unlock new opportunities with data and AI.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end lifecycle of machine learning projects, building and productionizing models for marketing attribution, customer churn, and finance forecasting.
• Characterize, evaluate, and fine-tune generative AI agents, such as natural language conversational systems, to improve their accuracy, efficiency, and reliability.
• Act as an internal consultant, translating challenges from marketing, product, and finance teams into data science problems and AI-driven solutions.
• Manage the full project workflow, from business problem discovery and feature engineering to model deployment and performance monitoring.
• Proactively collaborate and exchange information with Marketing and Product teams to translate business goals into technical data requirements and accomplish shared objectives.
• Develop intuitive data visualizations and dashboards using tools like Tableau or Looker to communicate complex findings to business stakeholders.
• Simplify complex processes by identifying opportunities for AI-driven solutions and clearly presenting findings in an actionable manner.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 5+ years of related experience; OR Master's degree with 3+ years of related experience; OR a PhD in a quantitative field with 1+ years of experience.
• Strong foundational knowledge of statistics, probability theory, and common data science algorithms.
• Proven hands-on experience building and deploying machine learning models in a production environment.
• Solid command of SQL for complex data querying, manipulation, and feature engineering.
• Demonstrated ability to work autonomously, navigate ambiguity, and drive projects from concept to completion.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience with generative AI, including hands-on work with LLMs and frameworks like LangChain, LlamaIndex, or the Hugging Face ecosystem.
• Experience in evaluating and optimizing the performance of AI systems or agents.
• Demonstrated expertise in specialized modeling domains such as causal inference, time-series analysis, or marketing mix modeling.
• Experience developing dashboards and visualizations in Tableau, Looker, or a similar platform.

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.

$141,000.00 - $228,075.00/yr

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