Principal Software Engineer (Cortex Backend)

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

We are looking for a Principal Backend Engineer to join our Cortex backend engineering group.

The group develops and maintains the backend of Cortex products - Cortex XSOAR, Cortex XDR, and Cortex XSIAM.  You will join a team focused on developing, innovating, and scaling the Cortex Platform, along with contributing to shared Cortex infrastructures and components. We are looking for candidates with a can-do attitude, who are passionate about complex problems and thrive on bringing value to thousands of customers.

Your Impact

• End-to-end backend development of features and components across their entire life cycle (design, develop, test, deploy, maintain)

• Work closely with peers across different teams and disciplines to shape solutions and integrate with other parts of the product

• Contribute to team-wide efforts - code reviews, design reviews, technical and architectural decisions

• Production oriented approach with providing real time mitigation and solutions to production issues

• Proactively review design, identify risks and  mitigate risks in ongoing and planned projects to ensure smooth execution 

• Design, build, and optimize data models and queries for speed and scale, using data storage technologies like MySQL and BigQuery

Your Experience 

• M.S/B.S degree in Computer Science or equivalent and 8+ years of software engineering experience, including development of a scalable server-side application

• Extensive hands-on programming skills in Python and/or Go

• Strong computer science fundamentals (e.g. understanding of lock-free data structures, bloom filters, minimal perfect hashing, consistent hashing etc)

• Proven Experience with cloud platforms (e.g. GCP / AWS / Azure)

• Experience with Microservices architecture (Kubernetes, GKE, EKS, AKS, Docker, Serverless, etc)

• Experience with big–data architectures (using Kafka, Splunk, Flink, etc)

• Experience with distributed computing (understand implications of CAP theorem, master election, brain split problem) and/or distributed DB/KVP (BigQuery,, Elastic Search, Kafka/PubSub and SingleStore)

• Hands-on experience with SQL/NoSQL based databases 

• Excellent troubleshooting abilities. Isolate issues found during testing and verify bug fixes once they are resolved

• Experience with the agile process and working with software development teams involved with building out full stack products, deployed on the cloud at scale

• High energy and the ability to work in a fast-paced environment with a can-do attitude

• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and cloud infra

• Familiarity with Cyber Technologies, Information Security, and Software Security

The Team

[Input by recruiter and audited by recruiting specialist]

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 $150,000-$216,000/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.