Senior Software Engineer - Platform Automation (Cortex)

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 Principal Software Engineer, you will be a technical trailblazer responsible for the architecture and evolution of our automation ecosystems. This role requires a visionary who can bridge the gap between emerging LLM research and production-grade reliability. You will define the technical foundations that enable autonomous security workflows, ensuring our platform is forward-compatible with the rapidly evolving Agentic AI landscape.

Your Impact

• Architectural Leadership: Define and own the technical vision for the Cortex Platform’s automation foundations and Agentic AI integrations.

• System Design for Autonomy: Architect highly resilient and non-deterministic systems, designing abstract frameworks that optimize security workflows for autonomous planning and execution.

• Advanced Problem Solving: Define the right technical approach for emerging challenges where no proven solution yet exists, specifically addressing LLM limitations like latency, hallucinations, and determinism.

• Scalable Engineering Standards: Define global technical standards for the platform’s automation ecosystem, merging advanced CI/CD governance with robust telemetry and metrics to track execution health across thousands of production tenants.

• Technical Alignment: Align diverse engineering stakeholders around a single, cohesive technical direction for platform-wide automation and integration features.

• Strategic Reliability: Drive step-function improvements in system reliability and quality, establishing a technical roadmap that anticipates the next generation of “Agentic Response.”

Qualifications

Your Experience

• 8+ years of experience as a software engineer.

• Deep understanding of prompting and context management.

• Hands-on experience building and running LLM-based systems in production.

• Experience defining system architectural vision end-to-end.

• Capability to define scalable data-driven standards.

• Strong Python skills, with working knowledge of Go.

• Experience with end-to-end codebase ownership, including CI/CD, testing, and releases.

• Familiarity with security and automation workflows, APIs, integrations, and building automated responses.

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