Senior Technical Support Engineer, US Government, VM Specialist

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

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.

Your Career

You will work firsthand with our valued customers to address 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 own area of expertise, with a strong capability of detailing difficult 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 multi-functional teams, creating an environment of transparency that ultimately leads to better products, better working environments, and better cybersecurity. Your quick thinking and support to our clients provides the fast assistance they need to keep their environments secure – which means you’ll need to move quickly, thoughtfully, and provide technical assistance as needed (often, 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
• Travel to customer sites in the event of a critical situation to expedite resolution as required
• Provide on-call support 24x7 on an as-needed basis

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

Your Experience 

• Able to effectively communicate to all levels and stakeholders - internally and externally on complex technical issues
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, self-motivated and detail-oriented with the ability to see the bigger picture
• Ability to work independently, as well as contribute as a team player
• Knowledge of one or more virtualization hypervisors - VMWare ESX/ESXi, KVM/Qemu, Citrix, XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V
• Demonstrable basic knowledge with AWS and Microsoft Azure installation, configuration, and administration of security features and services including identity and access management, service-related security features, networking, firewalls, encryption, and related best practices
• Experience interfacing with firewalls and firewall technology. Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) experience preferred
• Demonstrate basic knowledge of Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Oracle cloud infrastructure(OCI)
• Knowledge of deploying firewalls in one or more Public cloud infrastructures: AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI and Alibaba 
• Experience deploying third-party networking and security services into VMware NSX for vSphere is a plus
• Good understanding of the following networking protocols (TCP/IP, Ethernet, VLAN, OSPF, BGP)
• Good understanding with Security Protocols (IPSEC / SSL-VPN / NAT)
• Good understanding of Unix/Linux and Windows operating systems
• Experience with Cisco, Checkpoint, Juniper(Netscreen), Fortinet is a plus
• Knowledge of traffic generation tools and scripting languages is a plus

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/commissioned roles) is expected to be between $108,000 - $162,000/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.