Principal Offensive Security Engineer

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

5d•$167,600 - $271,150•Onsite

About The Position

The Offensive Security team is seeking a Principal Offensive Security Engineer to support the team responsible for testing the security of all the products and services that make up the Palo Alto Networks portfolio. This requires choreographing a routine of on-demand and continuous penetration testing engagements involving multiple, trusted third-party partners. We further supplement this with in-house penetration testing and red team operations to ensure the requisite breadth and depth of coverage across the attack surface. The successful candidate will thrive in a fast-paced environment where energy, drive, and a collaborative approach are key to success. And of course, a passion for adversary tradecraft — not just finding vulnerabilities, but proving whether we'd detect and stop a real attacker.

Requirements

8+ years of professional experience in Offensive Security, Red Teaming, or Penetration Testing.
Deep technical mastery of at least one major cloud provider (GCP, AWS, or Azure), including identity management and network security controls.
Experience with multi-tenant SaaS/PaaS isolation testing and authorization-boundary segmentation validation.
Proven expertise in Kubernetes and Container Security, with the ability to identify flaws in orchestration and runtime environments.
Strong experience auditing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and CI/CD pipelines for security misconfigurations.
Hands-on experience leading pentesting, assumed-breach operations: post-exploitation, lateral movement, Active Directory and cloud IdP attack paths, C2 infrastructure, and EDR/XDR evasion.
Solid understanding of networking protocols, authentication frameworks (LDAP/AD, OAuth, SAML), and modern application security.
Experience operating within high-compliance or highly regulated environments (e.g., FedRAMP, IL5, SOC2).
Working knowledge of MITRE ATT&CK for operation planning and reporting.
Ability to think creatively and work independently to solve complex security problems in a fast-paced environment.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence security outcomes across different business units.

Responsibilities

Conduct comprehensive penetration tests across a diverse portfolio of cloud-native applications, large-scale infrastructure, and complex network architectures, covering all FedRAMP-mandated attack vectors
Execute multi-tenant isolation testing and segmentation validation
Identify, exploit, and document vulnerabilities in cloud services, container orchestration platforms, and automated deployment pipelines.
Plan and lead assumed-breach, objective-based red team operations against systems — including lateral movement, privilege escalation, and persistence — to test the effectiveness of defensive controls, monitoring, and alerting systems
Provide expert-level security guidance to SRE and Engineering teams during remediation planning and secure architectural design.
Lead the security assessment of internal tooling, identity management systems, and third-party integrations.
Research and develop custom tooling or scripts to automate testing and improve the efficiency of offensive engagements.
Translate complex technical findings into high-impact reports and presentations for both technical stakeholders and executive leadership.
Mentor junior team members and act as a subject matter expert on emerging threats and exploitation trends.