Principal Engineer, ASIC Design

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

As a Design engineer on the ASIC team, you will create complex digital logic for our groundbreaking next-generation firewall products that meet or exceed industry-leading requirements for features, performance, and reliability.  You will define architecture and microarchitecture specifications, implement logic, and validate the designs on diverse platforms including simulation, emulation, formal verification, and silicon validation.

Your Impact

• Create design specifications and define the ASIC architecture and microarchitecture in close collaboration with the Systems Architecture team

• Implement RTL designs in SystemVerilog

• Ensure that designs meet aggressive goals for functionality, performance, and reliability in close collaboration with ASIC verification and systems validation engineers

  • Evaluate and enhance test plans to maximize coverage

  • Debug complex test scenarios

  • Analyze coverage reports and suggest new tests to close coverage gaps

  • Define and implement sophisticated design for debug mechanisms

• Ensure that designs meet aggressive goals for area, timing, power, and testability in close collaboration with ASIC physical design engineers

  • Perform synthesis

  • Optimize floorplan

  • Analyze and reduce power consumption

  • Close timing

• Define new methodologies to continuously improve quality and velocity

• Create powerful scripts to automate design tasks

Your Experience 

• BS in EE, CE, or CS required - MSEE preferred or equivalent military experience required

• Minimum 8 years experience in ASIC design

• Demonstrated success in taking multiple ASIC products from concept to mass production

• Expertise in SystemVerilog for design

• Technical strength in the following areas is required:

  • Defining microarchitecture to optimize power, performance, and area

  • Lint, CDC, RDC, and X verification

  • Debugging simulation, emulation, and silicon validation

  • Analyzing physical design reports and fixing timing and power violations

  • Analyzing code coverage results

• Experience in the following areas is a plus:

  • Networking and cyber security

  • Working knowledge of PCIe or Ethernet standards

  • Experience with hardware implementation of Search Algorithms

  • Formal property verification

  • Silicon validation - bringup, test, debug, and regression

  • Creating models in Python and C/C++

  • Synthesis, equivalency check, and automatic formal verification

• Skilled in writing powerful, modular, and scalable scripts in Python and UNIX shell to automate design tasks

• Demonstrated ownership and independence in planning, debugging complex failures, closing metrics-driven tasks, driving vendors, and reporting status

• Strong leadership, collaboration, and communication skills

The Team

We are the global cybersecurity leader, known for always challenging the security status quo. Our mission is to protect our way of life in the digital age by preventing successful cyberattacks. This has given us the privilege of safely enabling tens of thousands of organizations and their customers. Our pioneering Security Operating Platform emboldens their digital transformation with continuous innovation that seizes the latest breakthroughs in security, automation, and analytics. By delivering a true platform and empowering a growing ecosystem of change-makers like us, we provide highly effective and innovative cybersecurity across clouds, networks, and mobile devices.

Our Security Operating Platform is built for automation. It is easy to operate, with capabilities that work together, so customers can prevent successful cyberattacks. They can use analytics to automate routine tasks, so they can focus on what matters. We are known for continuously delivering innovations; and with Application Framework, we extend that to an open ecosystem of developers that benefit from our customers’ existing investment in data, sensors, and enforcement points.

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/commissioned roles) is expected to be between $178,000 - $220,000/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. 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.