Distinguished AI Engineer (Office of the CTO)

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 Your Career As a Distinguished AI Engineer in the Office of the CTO (OCTO), you will shape the next of AI-powered security and developer-productivity solutions. You will lead exploratory research, rapid prototyping, and cross-functional pilots that fuse state-of-the-art foundation models with Palo Alto Networks’ security platforms. Your Impact Drive end-to-end AI integrations with industry-leading foundation models (e.g., current frontier LLMs) across text, code, image, and multimodal domains. Prototype and benchmark MCP and A2A protocols to enable dynamic orchestration of multiple agents and tools Lead context engineering & prompt design for RAG and agentic workflows; create evaluation harnesses to measure accuracy, latency, and cost Build proof-of-concepts that embed AI throughout the software-development life-cycle (SDLC)—planning, coding, code review, testing, and release—to quantify productivity gains Research and validate AI-driven cybersecurity use-cases (e.g., threat-hunting copilots, real-time anomaly triage) and partner with product groups to harden prototypes for production. Instrument metrics pipelines that track developer and security-analyst outcomes to demonstrate ROI of AI initiatives Craft executive-level narratives, demos, and visualizations that clearly communicate innovation roadmaps, technical trade-offs, and business impact Mentor senior engineers and researchers; foster a culture of experimentation, responsible AI, and security-first thinking Lead strategic external partnerships and technical advocacy, collaborating with major industry partners to shape defensive AI product roadmaps. Engage with policy and ethics working groups to ensure responsible and compliant AI deployment, including navigating legal and corporate communications reviews.