Sr. Technical Support Engineer, United States Government - job 3 of 5

To comply with U.S. federal government requirements, U.S. citizenship is required for this position.

(Working Hours 2:00 pm - 11:00 pm CT)

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks® everything starts and ends with our mission:

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.
Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. We are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are done, and we’re looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of cybersecurity as we are.

Who We Are

We take our mission of protecting the digital way of life seriously. We are relentless in protecting our customers and we believe that the unique ideas of every member of our team contributes to our collective success. Our values were crowdsourced by employees and are brought to life through each of us everyday - from disruptive innovation and collaboration, to execution. From showing up for each other with integrity to creating an environment where we all feel included.

As a member of our team, you will be shaping the future of cybersecurity. We work fast, value ongoing learning, and we respect each employee as a unique individual. Knowing we all have different needs, our development and personal wellbeing programs are designed to give you choice in how you are supported. This includes our FLEXBenefits wellbeing spending account with over 1,000 eligible items selected by employees, our mental and financial health resources, and our personalized learning opportunities - just to name a few!

At Palo Alto Networks, we believe in the power of collaboration and value in-person interactions. This is why our employees generally work full time from our office with flexibility offered where needed. This setup fosters casual conversations, problem-solving, and trusted relationships. Our goal is to create an environment where we all win with precision.

Your Career

You will work firsthand with our valued Public Sector customers, supporting their complex post-sales concerns where analysis of situations or data requires an in-depth evaluation of many factors. You’re a critical thinker in understanding the methods, techniques, and evaluation criteria for obtaining results. You’ll enjoy networking with key contacts outside your area of expertise, with a strong ability to explain complex technical issues to both non-technical and technical professionals.

As part of our U.S. Government (USG) team, you will be a designated customer advocate, assisting in providing tailored support, weekly reviews, root cause analysis for critical issues, release reviews, upgrade planning, and quarterly business reviews. You will provide personalized support and become deeply familiar with your customer’s implementation and business priorities, proactively driving best practices to help continuously improve their security posture.

You will regularly participate in technical discussions with cross-functional teams, creating an environment of transparency that ultimately leads to better products, stronger partnerships, and enhanced cybersecurity outcomes. Your quick thinking and proactive support provide the fast assistance our Public Sector clients need to keep their environments secure—meaning you’ll need to move quickly, think strategically, and provide expert technical assistance in high-pressure situations..

Your Impact

• Offer advanced-level technical assistance to our Public Sector customers, ensuring prompt resolution of complex issues and providing tailored solutions to optimize their security infrastructure

• Effectively communicate technical solutions to technical and executive stakeholders, fostering trust and credibility within government agencies and organizations

• Provide tailored troubleshooting, configuration guidance, and best practices, with an understanding of government compliance and security requirements

• Take ownership of support cases from initiation to resolution, ensuring meticulous documentation of all troubleshooting steps, timely updates, and comprehensive closure summaries in the ticketing system

• Conduct multi-vendor troubleshooting on complex customer engagements, ensuring a seamless experience for public sector partners

• Utilize fault isolation and root cause analysis skills to provide post-sales technical support, configuration, troubleshooting, and industry best practices to customers

• Be a subject matter expert on core technologies of Palo Alto Networks product line, particularly in environments relevant to public sector customers

• Identify product defects (code, environment) via lab replication using network simulation, lab automation, performance testing, and validation tools

• File bug reports with the engineering team and develop test plans and best practices with Quality Assurance teams to improve overall software and hardware quality per release cycle

• Author Technical Support Bulletins and technical documentation in the Knowledge Base for training materials, marketing collateral, manuals, and problem-solving guides

• Provide on-call support 24x7 on an as-needed basis including weekend and holidays

Your Experience

• Minimum of 5 years of network security experience, with a preference for experience supporting government or public sector clients

• Expertise in TCP/IP, advanced knowledge of LAN/WAN technologies, and general routing/switching

• Understanding of packet flow across multiple OSI layers

• Extensive experience troubleshooting Remote Access VPN solutions

• Ability to independently debug broad, complex, and unique networks with mixed media and protocols

• Proficiency with network troubleshooting tools

• Consistently maintains rigorous case management practices, ensuring thorough documentation and timely updates

• Experience interfacing with firewalls and firewall technology. Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) experience preferred

Preferred Skills:

• Experience working with U.S. government, federal, state, or local agencies

• Virtualization experience (AWS, Azure, VMware, OpenStack)

• Experience with Windows, Mac OS, and Linux (debugging, editing registries, plist, etc.)

• Multi-vendor interoperability exposure

• Authentication protocols – LDAP, TACACS+, Radius, SAML

• BS in computer science, information technology, computer architecture, electrical engineering, mathematics, or related experience—or equivalent military experience

The Team

Our technical support team is essential to our success and mission. As part of this team, you enable customer success by providing support to clients after they have purchased our products. Our dedication to our customers doesn't stop once they sign it just evolves. Our technical team provides behind-the-scenes support to meet our customers' needs. As threats and technology evolve, we stay in step to accomplish our mission.

You'll be involved in implementing new products, transitioning from old products to new, and will fix integrations and critical issues as they are raised. In fact, you'll seek them out to ensure our clients are safely supported. We fix and identify technical problems, with a pointed focus of providing the best customer support in the industry.

We're a fast-growing, immensely successful organization because of our people and products (built and supported by our people). We work the frontlines against cyberthreats and attacks, protecting every day transactions in the digital environment. It means we're good at scaling quickly to new threats, get fulfillment from resolving new problems, and think about things just plain differently.

Compensation Disclosure 

The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, experience, and work location. For candidates who receive an offer at the posted level, the starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/com-missioned roles) is expected to be between $108000 - $175200/YR. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.

Our Commitment

We’re problem solvers that take risks and challenge cybersecurity’s status quo. It’s simple: we can’t accomplish our mission without diverse teams innovating, together.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all qualified individuals with a disability. If you require assistance or accommodation due to a disability or special need, please contact us at  [email protected].

Palo Alto Networks is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Is role eligible for Immigration Sponsorship? No. Please note that we will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.