Engineering Software Manager (Cortex Cloud)

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

The Team

Engineering - The Engineering team is a key player in the design, development, and delivery of our products. We are a team of builders and innovators that love solving big problems. We are a diverse group of individuals with a passion for technology and a desire to make a difference in the world. We are looking for people who are excited to build the future of cybersecurity and help us protect our digital way of life.

Job Summary

As an Engineering Manager at Cortex Cloud, you will lead a team of ~6 engineers operating in one of our most complex and cross-functional domains. This role requires a strong blend of people leadership and deep technical expertise, including systems design and large-scale distributed cloud architectures. You will be responsible for driving the design and delivery of complex, high-impact systems, while ensuring the team executes against the roadmap with both speed and engineering rigor.

Key Responsibilities

• Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing software engineering team, fostering a culture of empowerment and driving both individual growth and collective impact.
• Partner closely with Product Management and cross-functional teams (Infrastructure, Research, UX) to define priorities and shape multi-quarter product roadmaps, ensuring alignment across all stakeholders.
• Own the end-to-end software development lifecycle, translating product strategy into executable plans and ensuring consistent, high-quality, on-time delivery.
• Provide architectural leadership for scalable, distributed systems operating at petabyte scale, guiding the design and implementation of high-throughput, cloud-native backend microservices.
• Drive production readiness by enforcing best practices around deployment, observability, reliability, and runtime stability, focusing on the details to ensure operational excellence.
• Align stakeholders across business units through clear communication of technical strategy, trade-offs, priorities, risks, and execution plans.
• Engage directly with strategic customers to lead technical deep dives and architecture reviews, and to influence future product direction.
• Foster a culture of high engineering standards, accountability, and continuous improvement, with a strong emphasis on quality and security.

• 3-4 years of experience managing software engineering teams within a large-scale organization.
• 5+ years of hands-on software engineering experience with a strong systems-level foundation.
• Proven ability to plan, execute, and deliver complex roadmaps with high predictability, owning distributed cloud products end-to-end.
• Demonstrated experience designing and operating large-scale cloud architectures on platforms such as GCP, AWS, or Azure.
• Strong collaboration skills with a track record of aligning cross-disciplinary teams around shared objectives.

• Experience with programming languages such as Go and Python.
• Familiarity with large-scale data platforms, including BigQuery, MongoDB, and MySQL.
• Professional experience in cybersecurity, data security, or threat intelligence.
• Experience operating and maintaining highly distributed services at massive scale.