Principal Engineer Software Access Team (Cortex Platform)

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

Job Summary

As a Principal Backend Engineer on the Access Team, you will be a key technical leader responsible for designing, building, and scaling the critical backend services that manage identity and access for the entire Cortex Platform. You will drive architectural decisions and ensure the security, reliability, and performance of our core access control systems.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of highly scalable, secure, and resilient backend services for identity and access management.
• Set the technical direction for the team, making key architectural decisions and promoting engineering best practices.
• Write and review high-quality, production-ready code for critical platform services.
• Mentor and develop other engineers on the team, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous improvement.
• Collaborate with product managers, security experts, and other engineering teams to translate complex requirements into robust technical solutions.
• Drive the operational excellence of our services, including monitoring, alerting, and participating in an on-call rotation.
• Investigate and integrate AI and ML models to enhance threat detection and intelligent access control within the platform.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field with 15 years of professional software development experience, or a Master's degree with 12 years of experience, or a PhD with 8 years of experience.
• Extensive experience in backend development using languages such as Go, Java, or Python.
• Proven track record of designing, building, and operating large-scale, distributed systems in a cloud environment.
• Deep understanding of software architecture, data structures, and algorithms.
• Experience with API design and development for complex systems.

• Experience with identity and access management (IAM) systems, OAuth2, SAML, or other authentication and authorization protocols.
• Hands-on experience with public cloud services (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies like Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience in a technical leadership or mentorship role.
• Familiarity with integrating machine learning models into production backend systems.