Principal Architect, Enterprise AI (Distinguish IT SWE)

Palo Alto Networks • Santa Clara, CA

122d • $243,000 - $335,000

About The Position

As a Distinguished Architect for Enterprise AI Platform, you will be driving the design, implementation, scaling, and evangelism of the end-to-end platform that will be used across IT and Enterprise business functions (Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR, Legal, etc). Distinguished Enterprise Architect to lead our transformation toward AI-first development practices while optimizing developer productivity and modernizing our enterprise application landscape. We are looking for a visionary leader who will architect and drive the implementation of cutting-edge developer productivity solutions and a modern enterprise applications landscape with AI at the core. This role bridges the gap between emerging AI technologies and practical enterprise needs while establishing architectural standards that accelerate delivery velocity across the organization. The Distinguished Architect will ensure that all transformation efforts are strategically aligned, scalable, reusable, and sustainable. This role directly impacts the organization's ability to innovate faster, reduce time-to-market, and maintain engineering excellence while scaling AI capabilities across all business functions.

Requirements

• 15+ years in software engineering, distributed systems, or enterprise architecture, including 7+ years leading enterprise and application architecture at scale.
• Proven expertise in designing complex, enterprise-grade platforms (custom applications and SaaS solutions), ideally across multiple domains (e.g., customer support, finance, sales).
• Experience with application modernization, cloud native architecture, API first design principles, integration strategies, event driven architecture, disaster recovery, and application security patterns.
• Deep knowledge of AI innovations and practical understanding of the full AI lifecycle for developer experience, building agents, apps.
• Extensive experience with distributed systems architecture, microservices, multi cloud, hybrid cloud, Integration platforms, data platforms, and data lakes.
• Strong communication skills with a track record of influencing across VP+ and cross-org stakeholders.
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Must be located in SF Bay area.

Responsibilities

• Define and evangelize enterprise-wide architectural vision for engineering excellence, developer productivity platforms, and AI-integrated applications.
• Establish architectural principles, design patterns, and engineering standards that prioritize quality, reliability, maintainability, and AI-first approaches.
• Drive technical strategy for internal developer platforms (IDPs), code quality frameworks, development toolchains, reducing tech debt and improving delivery velocity.
• Design and implement comprehensive code quality frameworks including automated testing, static analysis, and security scanning.
• Architect self-service capabilities, automated testing frameworks, and deployment pipelines with built-in quality gates.
• Champion platform engineering practices, infrastructure-as-code methodologies, and shift-left quality approaches.
• Drive selection of AI tools, frameworks, cloud solutions, and hybrid infrastructure that align with business and engineering needs.
• Establish metrics and observability systems to measure and continuously improve both developer productivity, code quality and improve security posture.
• Promote adoption of a consistent technology stack reducing complexity.
• Lead the integration of AI/ML capabilities into enterprise applications and development workflows.
• Collaborate with engineering leadership to align architectural decisions with business objectives and quality standards.
• Foster a culture of continuous learning, technical excellence, and engineering craftsmanship.
• Actively learn and incorporate advances in AI, GenAI, LLMs, AIOps, and scalable architectures.
• Bring emerging innovations into production through POCs, hackathons, and controlled experimentation.

Benefits

• FLEXBenefits wellbeing spending account with over 1,000 eligible items selected by employees.
• Mental and financial health resources.
• Personalized learning opportunities.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Industry: Computer and Electronic Product Manufacturing
• Education Level: Bachelor's degree