Principal Engineer Software (Prisma AIRS Core Services Backend)

Palo Alto Networks•Office - USA - CA - Headquarters, CA

9d•$156,400 - $253,000•Onsite

About The Position

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 Principal Software Engineer to join the Prisma AIRS shared services team, specifically focused on platform applications. In this role, you will play a crucial part in designing, developing, and optimizing robust, scalable, and high-performance backend systems that power our cutting-edge AI security platform, and you will set the technical direction that other engineers build on. This role is located at our dynamic Santa Clara, CA HQ Campus and in office 3 days a week. This is not a remote role.

Requirements

10+ years of software engineering experience, building and designing large distributed systems and web services in the cloud.
Expertise in at least one strongly typed programming language (Go (preferred!), or Java, C#, C++) or modern Python (type hints, Pydantic, etc).
Experience with a major cloud provider like GCP (preferred), AWS, or Azure.
Hands-on experience with SQL/NoSQL based databases such as Postgres, MySQL, Spanner, BigTable, BigQuery, MongoDB, etc.
Experience with a queuing system such as RabbitMQ or Kafka or PubSub.
Experience with microservices architecture (Kubernetes, GKE, EKS, AKS, Docker, Serverless, etc).
Experience writing comprehensive unit and end-to-end tests.
Prior on-call troubleshooting abilities. Isolate issues found during testing and verify bug fixes once they are resolved.
Experience partnering with product managers and front end engineers.
Experience in leading and doing big projects end to end.
Self-disciplined, self-managed, self-motivated, and strong sense of ownership, urgency, and drive.
Excellent verbal and written communication and collaboration skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience with graph databases such as Neo4j is highly desired.
Deep knowledge in at least one public cloud (GCP, AWS, or OCI).
Experience with infra tools (docker, kubernetes, terraform), CI/CD pipelines (GitLab or GitHub), and observability tools such as Grafana.
Experience using AI tools to aid design and development.
Experience with the agile process and working with software development teams involved with building out full stack products, deployed on the cloud at scale.
Ready to understand and dissect new technology stacks quickly.
High energy and the ability to work in a fast-paced environment with a can-do attitude.
Familiarity with Cyber Technologies, Information Security, and Software Security is a plus.
BS or MS in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent professional experience or equivalent military experience.

Responsibilities

Set the technical direction for shared platform services and drive architecture decisions across the Prisma AIRS organization.
Collaborate with product managers, frontend software engineers, product designers, and infrastructure software engineers to ensure the success of the Prisma AIRS organization.
Design and build innovative and solid products to ensure our customers can use AI securely.
Own new features/functionality from start to finish. Participate in all phases of the product development cycle, from definition, design, through implementation and test. Ensure that applications are production-ready, scalable, and reliable.
Design, build, and operate production security services as a true owner, ensuring top-notch reliability, availability, and performance.
Develop expertise in new technologies and keep up with the rapidly evolving AI security landscape.
Mentor engineers, raise the engineering bar, and champion high standards of development and innovation across teams.