Director, Software Engineering (ADEM)
About The Position
Your Career Palo Alto Networks® is shaping the future with technology that is transforming the way people and organizations operate in the cloud, at the network edge, and everywhere in between. As the Director of Software Engineering for ADEM, you will oversee the development of high-scale backend systems and endpoint technologies that monitor and optimize the digital experience for millions of users globally. You are a leader who thrives on building high-performance teams, navigating architectural complexity at a massive scale, and championing the next frontier of AI-driven engineering. Your Impact Strategic Leadership: Define and execute the technical roadmap for the ADEM platform, ensuring it remains the industry leader in autonomous digital experience management. Drive AIOps & Innovation: Lead the transition from traditional monitoring to Agentic AI workflows, where the platform proactively identifies and remediates performance bottlenecks before they impact the user. Engineering Efficiency: Champion a modern SDLC by mandating and integrating AI-powered development tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf) to drive productivity gains across your engineering pods. Scale & Performance: Own the architecture that processes billions of telemetry events daily across a global footprint, maintaining sub-second latency and five-nines reliability.
Requirements
- Engineering Leadership: 15+ years in software engineering with 5+ years leading large, distributed organizations and managing other managers.
- AI-Powered Development: Expert at leveraging and mandating AI-assist tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, or Copilot) to accelerate the SDLC and drive team-wide productivity.
- Cloud-Native Scale: Proven track record building multi-tenant, high-throughput systems (Go, Python, K8s, Kafka) on GCP or AWS.
- Observability & Telemetry: Deep expertise in high-volume data pipelines, synthetic monitoring, and real-time analytics.
- Strategic Communication: Ability to translate complex architectural roadmaps into clear, high-impact business outcomes for executive stakeholders.
- Education: BS or MS in Computer Science or a related technical field.
Nice To Haves
- SASE & Zero Trust: Domain experience in Secure Access Service Edge, SD-WAN, or GlobalProtect.
- AI/ML Innovation: Experience integrating LLMs or AIOps for automated system remediation.
Responsibilities
- Strategic Leadership Technical Vision: Define and execute the roadmap for an AI-first ADEM ecosystem, driving the transition from traditional monitoring to proactive, autonomous self-healing architectures.
- Architectural Evolution: Lead the design of high-scale, cloud-native services that prioritize "Secure AI by Design" and efficient, global-scale GCP utilization.
- Execution & Delivery Engineering Efficiency: Oversee the delivery of high-throughput telemetry pipelines while mandating the use of AI-powered tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf) to radically accelerate the SDLC.
- Operational Excellence: Ensure enterprise-grade reliability (five-nines) across a global footprint, balancing peak system performance with strategic cloud-cost optimization.
- Collaboration & Influence Cross-Functional Synergy: Partner with Product Management, Data Science, and Security teams to integrate advanced ML models into the ADEM observability fabric.
- Executive Representation: Serve as the primary technical authority for ADEM in executive forums, influencing the broader SASE roadmap and supporting high-stakes customer engagements.
- People & Culture Talent Scale: Build and mentor a world-class organization of Engineering Managers and Principal Engineers, fostering a robust leadership and technical pipeline.
- Ownership Culture: Cultivate an environment of extreme ownership and innovation, empowering distributed teams to solve high-ambiguity challenges in a fast-paced environment.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
Number of Employees
5,001-10,000 employees
