Sr Principal Engineer Software (AIRS AI Platform)

Job description

**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**

With Prisma AIRS, Palo Alto Networks is building the world's most comprehensive AI security platform.

Organizations are increasingly building complex ecosystems of AI models, applications, and agents, creating dynamic new attack surfaces with risks that traditional security approaches cannot address.

In response, Prisma AIRS delivers model security, posture management, AI red teaming, and runtime protection.

Our customers can confidently deploy AI-driven innovation while ensuring a formidable security posture from development through runtime.

We are looking for a highly skilled and experienced Senior Principal Engineer to join the Prisma AIRS to play a crucial part in designing, developing, and optimizing robust, scalable, and high-performance backend systems that power our cutting-edge AI security platform.

**This role is located at our dynamic Seattle WA office - in office 3 days a week.

This is not a remote role.**

**Your Impact**

+ Define and drive the technical vision and long-term strategy for multiple complex, highly distributed backend systems.
+ Lead the end-to-end architecture and design of innovative, cross-functional product initiatives, ensuring solutions are scalable, reliable, and secure for a global enterprise.
+ Influence technical and product roadmaps by collaborating with senior leaders, product managers, and engineers across multiple organizations.
+ Serve as a hands-on technical leader, providing mentorship and raising the technical bar for other senior and staff-level engineers, fostering a culture of engineering excellence.
+ Pioneer and evangelize best practices for software development, operational excellence, and architectural patterns that impact entire product lines.

**Your Experience**

+ Deep and proven experience (12+ years) of architecting, building, and launching complex, large-scale distributed systems with significant business impact.
+ Expert-level proficiency in modern Python or at least one strongly typed programming language such as Go, Java, or C++.
+ Deep expertise in modern cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) with a track record of building highly scalable and resilient cloud-native applications.
+ Demonstrable experience operating mission-critical systems in production with stringent SLAs, including on-call leadership and incident response.
+ Extensive experience with Kubernetes and the cloud-native ecosystem, including a deep understanding of its internals and operational best practices.
+ Experience with machine learning (ML/MLOps), security, or data engineering would be a significant advantage.
+ Exceptional communication and presentation skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
+ Comfortable with ambiguity and possess the ability to drive clarity and alignment on technical direction in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment.

**The Team**
Our team is at the forefront of AI security, building platforms that act as a secure gateway for machine learning pipelines.

We specialize in developing advanced model scanners and policy enforcers that integrate seamlessly with modern ML workflows to identify and mitigate threats.

Our work focuses on providing security AI ecosystems to protect against real-world threats like vulnerabilities embedded in ML models , model tampering, and data exfiltration.

Through these efforts, our team secures the entire AI lifecycle from end to end.

If you are excited by the challenge of defending against model tampering, AI forensics, and malicious code at runtime, and want to help define the standards for AI safety and security, we encourage you to apply.

**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 $212,000 - $240,000/YR.

The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus.

A description of our employee benefits may be found here (http://benefits.paloaltonetworks.com/) .

**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 accommodations@paloaltonetworks.com .

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.

Required Skill Profession

Other General