Sr Principal Engineer Software (Cortex Backend Engineering)

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!

At Palo Alto Networks, we believe in the power of collaboration and value in-person interactions. This is why our employees generally work full time from our office with flexibility offered where needed. This setup fosters casual conversations, problem-solving, and trusted relationships. Our goal is to create an environment where we all win with precision.

Your Career

We are looking for a Senior Principal Backend Engineer to join our Cortex backend engineering group.
The group develops and maintains the backend of Cortex products - Cortex XSOAR, Cortex XDR, and Cortex XSIAM. The great majority of the Cortex engineering group is located in the Santa Clara and Tel Aviv offices.
You will join a team focused on developing, innovating, and scaling the Cortex Platform, along with contributing to shared Cortex infrastructures and components. We are looking for candidates with a can-do attitude, who are passionate about complex problems and thrive on bringing value to thousands of customers.

Your Impact

As a Senior Principal Engineer on the team, you will:

• Work regularly across teams as an acknowledged technical leader in the organization

• Drive projects from requirements to complete design and implementation as project lead or mentor thereof

• Lead efforts to align planned work across the product in collaboration with product management, UX design, and fellow engineering stakeholders

• Utilize your big-picture perspective to spot existing and impending problems, then work with senior engineers and leadership across the department to analyze and solve them

• Proactively spot, articulate, and mitigate risks in ongoing and planned projects to ensure smooth execution and high output – this may include providing ad hoc mentorship, communicating with project stakeholders, or rolling up your sleeves and stepping in to help move things along

• Mentor engineers across the department

• Regularly provide cross-team technical collaboration and consultation

• Design, build, and optimize data models and queries for speed and scale, using data storage technologies like MySQL and BigQuery

• Design and build business logic and API endpoints using Python and Flask

• Design and build backend services using Go

Your Experience 

• 14+ years of experience in software engineering, with a focus on cloud-native application development, at large organizations or innovative startups

• Strong programming skills in one of Python, Go, or Java, with experience in building distributed systems

• 8+ years of experience in cloud technologies like ElasticSearch, Pubsub, etc.

• Excellent troubleshooting abilities. Isolate issues found during testing and verify bug fixes once they are resolved

• Experience with cloud development (REST APIs, Databases, Serverless computing) of distributed cloud applications

• Experience with building and delivering services and workflows at scale, leveraging microservices architectures

• Good understanding of public cloud design considerations and limitations in areas of microservice architectures, security, global network infrastructure, distributed systems, and load balancing

• Experience with the agile process and working with software development teams involved with building out full stack products, deployed on the cloud at scale

• Experience as a hands-on tech lead / architect

• Can-do attitude and ability to make trade-off judgements with data driven decision making

• High energy and the ability to work in a fast-paced environment

• Enjoys working with many different teams with strong collaboration and communications skills

• BS/MS in Computer Science or Computer Engineering or related technical degree

Nice to Have

• Strong understanding and applied knowledge of Kubernetes architecture deployments (such as Ansible, Kubespray, Helm, CDK8s, k8s managed and unmanaged) and a variety of Kubernetes distributions such as Rancher Kubernetes Engine (RKE2)

• Experience with cloud-native storage solutions (e.g. Ceph, Rook) with a proven ability to develop and manage custom Kubernetes controllers or operators

• Strong understanding of principles of DevSecOps, DevOps, and Continuous Delivery

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/commissioned roles) is expected to be between $170000 - $277000/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.

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.

Is role eligible for Immigration Sponsorship?: Yes