Principal Engineer Software ( Prisma Access)

Palo Alto Networks • Santa Clara, CA

1d

About The Position

Your Career We are hiring a Principal Engineer who can build scalable platform capabilities and shape engineering strategy. This role blends full stack development with platform engineering. You will design and deliver internal platforms, developer tools, and services that improve engineering velocity across the company. This is a hands-on technical leadership role with broad impact.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years in senior/staff/principal roles
• Strong experience as a full stack engineer (TypeScript/React on frontend + Go/Python backend)
• Hands-on experience building or customizing Backstage or similar internal developer portals
• Expertise in platform engineering, internal platforms, APIs, developer experience systems
• Strong foundation in distributed systems and microservice architecture
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, and modern cloud infrastructure (GCP/AWS)
• Proven track record building CI/CD systems and improving engineering delivery
• Familiarity with observability (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, etc.)
• Experience influencing cross-team engineering decisions and driving technical strategy

Nice To Haves

• Experience building developer platforms as a product
• Plugin development experience for Backstage
• Experience with Terraform and infrastructure automation
• Service mesh experience (Istio/ASM etc.)
• Experience at a platform-focused startup or large-scale cloud environment

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture and development of platform services and Infrastructure tooling
• Build and extend internal developer portals (Backstage or similar) to improve discoverability, service onboarding, and operational visibility
• Design and deliver backend services and APIs that are secure, reliable, and easy to maintain
• Improve developer workflows across CI/CD, environment provisioning, and cloud automation
• Work across teams to define platform standards and enforce best practices
• Debug deep issues across distributed systems, networking, Kubernetes, and application layers
• Mentor engineers, influence architecture direction, and improve engineering quality
• Drive simplification and automation across the platform stack

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees