Principal Engineer Software (DLP Life Cycle (SDLC))

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 believe collaboration thrives in person. That’s why most of our teams work from the office full time, with flexibility when it’s needed. This model supports real-time problem-solving, stronger relationships, and the kind of precision that drives great outcomes.

We are seeking a Principal Engineer to own and revolutionize our engineering velocity and developer experience. This is a high-impact, cross-functional role designed to optimize the entire Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) from a developer's first line of code to production deployment.
You will be the principal architect and owner of the tools, processes, and systems that all other engineers at the company rely on.

Your core mission is to make our engineering team more productive, our systems more reliable, and our feedback loops faster. A key strategic component of this role is the research, evaluation, and integration of AI-powered tools to create a step-function improvement in all aspects of our development.

This role is located at our dynamic Santa Clara California headquarters campus and in the office 3 days a week.

Your Impact

1. Build & Environment

• Local Development: Design, automate, and maintain a seamless, containerized local development environment to ensure developers can be productive within minutes.
• Build Systems: Own and optimize all build scripts and infrastructure. Your primary metrics for success will be reducing build time, minimizing cost, and achieving near-perfect reliability.
• Dependency Management: Architect and automate our dependency management strategy to ensure secure, reproducible, and fast resolution of all third-party libraries.

2. Performance & Security

• Performance Optimization: Drive deep technical optimizations at the compiler and architectural levels to improve application performance. Implement and manage company-wide profiling tools and best practices.
• Security Hardening: Embed security into the SDLC. Integrate and manage Static Analysis (SAST) and other security tools within the build process to harden our applications from the ground up.

3. Test & Quality Automation

• Test Automation Framework: Own the strategy and infrastructure for all test automation, including Unit, Component, Integration, and Functional tests.
• Test Metrics: Define and report on key quality metrics, including Test Coverage, reliability (flakiness), and execution time.
• Failure Triage: Act as the primary owner for build and test failures. You will oversee the process of diagnosing failures, identifying the root cause, and ensuring the correct engineering team provides a timely fix.

4. CI/CD & Reporting

• Deployment Automation: Own, simplify, and secure the Continuous Deployment (CD) pipeline, enabling engineering teams to release features safely, autonomously, and frequently.
• Metrics & Reporting: Develop and maintain dashboards that provide clear visibility into engineering health, including code coverage, build times, test flakiness, and deployment frequency.

5. AI Tooling Integration

• Strategic AI Implementation: Act as the team's subject matter expert on AI-driven development tools.
• Prototyping & Integration: Continuously research, prototype, and integrate AI tooling to enhance all of the above responsibilities. This includes, but is not limited to:
  • AI-assisted code generation and refactoring.
  • Intelligent test case generation.
  • Automated bug detection and remediation.
  • AI-powered pipeline optimization and security analysis.

Your Experience 

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with a demonstrable focus on DevOps, Developer Experience (DevEx), or Build/Tools/Platform Engineering.
• Expert-level knowledge of CI/CD systems (e.g., GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, CircleCI) and build automation tools (e.g., Bazel, Gradle, Make, Webpack).
• Strong systems-level programming skills and experience with compiler-level optimization and performance profiling.
• Deep experience with test automation frameworks and a strong understanding of the "test pyramid" and quality metrics.
• Proficiency in at least one scripting language (e.g., Python, Go, Bash) and one compiled language (e.g., C++, Java, Rust, Go).
• Extensive experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• A proven track record of leading complex, cross-functional projects and influencing other senior engineers without direct authority.
• A "customer-first" mindset, where your "customers" are the other engineers in the company.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience integrating generative AI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Tabnine, or custom models) into a production engineering workflow.
• Experience building and managing large-scale, polyglot, and/or microservice-based build systems.
• Deep expertise in DevSecOps practices and automated security tooling.
• Experience with observability platforms (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry) to monitor engineering system performance.

The Team

To stay ahead of the curve, it’s critical to know where the curve is, and how to anticipate the changes we’re facing. For the fastest growing cybersecurity company, the curve is the evolution of cyberattacks, and the products and services that proactively address them. Our engineering team is at the core of our products – connected directly to the mission of preventing cyberattacks. They are constantly innovating – challenging the way we, and the industry, think about cybersecurity. These engineers aren’t shy about creating products to solve problems no one has tackled before. They define the industry, instead of waiting for directions. We need individuals who feel comfortable in ambiguity, excited by the prospect of challenge, and empowered by the unknown risks facing our everyday lives that are only enabled by a secure digital environment.

Our engineering team is provided with an unrivaled opportunity to build the products and practices that will support our company growth over the next decade, defining the cybersecurity industry as we know it. If you see the potential of how incredible products can transform a business, this is the team for you. If you don’t wait for directions, instead, identifying new features and opportunities we have to just get better, this is your new career.

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:    $185,000 - $210,000/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.

Is role eligible for Immigration Sponsorship?: Yes