Sr Principal Software Engineer (Cortex Xpanse, Vulnerability Assessment)

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

In the role of Senior Principal Software Engineer on the Vulnerability Assessment Research team, you will serve as a respected technical leader within the organization, collaborating frequently across teams. You will be responsible for overseeing projects from inception to execution as either the project lead or mentor, guiding the design and implementation process. Additionally, you will take the lead in coordinating planned work across the product in conjunction with product management, UX design, and other engineering stakeholders. Leveraging your broad perspective, you will identify and address existing and potential challenges and collaborate with senior engineers and department leadership to analyze and resolve them effectively.

Your Impact 

As a Senior Principal Software engineer on the Vulnerability Assessment Research team, you will:

• Work regularly across teams as an acknowledged technical leader in the organization
• Drive projects from requirements to complete design and implementation as project lead or mentor thereof
• Lead efforts to align planned work across the product in collaboration with product management, UX design, and fellow engineering stakeholders
• Utilize your big-picture perspective to spot existing and impending problems, then work with senior engineers and leadership across the department to analyze and solve them
• Proactively spot, articulate, and mitigate risks in ongoing and planned projects to ensure smooth execution and high output. This may include providing ad hoc mentorship, communicating with project stakeholders, or rolling up your sleeves and stepping in to help move things along
• Guide the key technical work on the team, including shaping architectural decisions, communicating impact and requirements to stakeholders, and driving toward end-to-end value
• Mentor engineers across the department
• Regularly provide cross-team technical collaboration and consultation
• Design, build, and optimize data models and queries for speed and scale, using data storage technologies like MySQL and BigQuery
• Design and build business logic and API endpoints using Python

Your Experience 

• 8+ years of industry experience as a professional software engineer building customer-facing software for a SaaS business
• Strong knowledge of distributed systems and architecture, including an understanding of what it takes to deploy and maintain such systems
• Experience with on-prem deployment and the risks associated with shipping software to a customer environment
• Good understanding of networking and cybersecurity fundamentals
• Extensive experience providing technical leadership within and across teams building enterprise features on a  multi-tenant SaaS platform at scale
• Excitement to dig in, prototype, build, test, and see projects through to production
• Ability to balance shipping new products and features with addressing technical debt and investments in architecture and infrastructure

• Expert knowledge and informed opinions on at least one of:

  • Databases, data modeling, profiling, and performance optimization

  • Methods and tradeoffs for handling concurrency

  • API design and distributed backend systems

• BS in computer science or related engineering discipline, or equivalent work experience or equivalent military experience required
• Proficient in one or more programming languages (ideally in Python)
• Experience using cloud managed services (ideally in GCP)

The Team

The Cortex Xpanse group is building an Exposure Management product to bring together the Palo Alto Networks proactive security product suite. As part of this effort, we are expanding the Cortex Vulnerability Assessment Research team and we’re looking for an experienced engineer to join us. At Xpanse, we believe that making the internet a safer place for our customers matters. The Unified Vulnerability and Exposure Management group builds the software that provides our customers visibility into their behind-the-firewall attack surface, allowing them to prioritize and remediate critical vulnerabilities using the XSIAM platform.

In this role, you will work with a highly talented team of engineers building a new product that leverages cutting-edge AI technology. You will drive technical designs and critical decisions related to the architecture, deployment strategy, and capabilities of the Vulnerability Assessment Research system. As you support your team, you will also be a part of the team of technical leaders building Unified Vulnerability and Exposure Management. You will collaborate closely with other engineers in the group and with other teams across the Cortex product suite. As part of this, you will help shape Palo Alto Networks vision of a proactive security platform. Your expertise will help secure  the world's most important organizations and impact the future of the cybersecurity industry.

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 $182,000/YR - $295,000/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.