Senior Principal Backend Engineer (CORTEX - Autonomous SOC)

Our Mission
At Palo Alto Networks®, we’re united by a shared mission—to protect our digital way of life. We thrive at the intersection of innovation and impact, solving real-world problems with cutting-edge technology and bold thinking. Here, everyone has a voice, and every idea counts. If you’re ready to do the most meaningful work of your career alongside people who are just as passionate as you are, you’re in the right place.
Who We Are
In order to be the cybersecurity partner of choice, we must trailblaze the path and shape the future of our industry. This is something our employees work at each day and is defined by our values: Disruption, Collaboration, Execution, Integrity, and Inclusion. We weave AI into the fabric of everything we do and use it to augment the impact every individual can have. If you are passionate about solving real-world problems and ideating beside the best and the brightest, we invite you to join us!
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.
Job Summary
We are looking for a Senior Principal Backend Engineer to join our Cortex team and help us to prevent, detect and respond to all runs on an integrated endpoint, network and cloud data – reduce the noise and focus on real threats.
More information about the Cortex XDR product can be found here.
Your Impact
You will be a part of a group with the mentality and independence of a startup, supported by the power of a successful corporation - You will design and build an infrastructure that supports billions of events per second, storing, processing and making them accessible and visible to the user while collaborating with the industry’s leading cyber products
You will be responsible for the complete software development life cycle including requirement analysis, design, development, deployment, and support - You will write clean, testable, readable, fast and maintainable code that is efficient and scalable
Drive the inception, strategy and execution of our autonomous investigation and response solution (Autonomous SOC)
Qualifications
9+ years of software engineering experience - Must
Experience in distributed cloud products
Experienced with a variety of database technologies (Mysql / Cassandra / Google BigQuery Amazon Redshift / ElasticSearch)
Experience in designing, building and maintaining a scalable server-side application
Experience with Agentic tools (Cursor, claude code, codex, opencode)- MUST
BSc in Computer Science or equivalent knowledge or equivalent military experience required
Experience in Go / Python - an advantage
Experience with GCP - advantage
Knowledge of graph databases - advantage
Experience with Kubernetes/Docker - advantage
Knowledge of the cyber field - advantage
Our Commitment
We’re trailblazers that dream big, 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 accommodations@paloaltonetworks.com.
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.