Sr Staff Engineer Software

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

This role is remote, but distance is no barrier to impact. Our hybrid teams collaborate across geographies to solve big problems, stay close to our customers, and grow together. You will be part of a culture that values trust, accountability, and shared success where your work truly matters.

Job Description

Your CareerAre you a highly technical individual with a passion for performance engineering? Join our innovative Cortex Server Performance team as a Senior Performance Engineer!Our team is responsible for all performance aspects of Cortex, developing, maintaining, and executing various performance tests to ensure our products are stable, scalable, and meet our SLA. As a Senior Performance Engineer, you will work on the Cortex platform, serving many teams and customers. You will diagnose and solve performance-related issues in a highly challenging product at a massive scale. Additionally, you will collaborate closely with different engineering teams to enhance performance test coverage and modernize our approach by heavily automating workflows and integrating smart analytical tools.Your Impact Architect the Automation: You won't just use tools; you will build them. Architect and maintain sophisticated, reusable Python-based automation frameworks and internal tooling that power our entire performance testing ecosystem for the Cortex platform.Take a hands-on approach to diagnosing complex performance issues across the full stack (Kubernetes, application code, databases, network).Design and implement high-scale load simulations that push our cloud infrastructure to its limits, ensuring stability under extreme conditions.AI-Driven Analysis: Move beyond manual log crunching. Proactively leverage AI-driven analytics and GenAI tools (e.g., for log summarization, anomaly detection on metrics) to accelerate root cause analysis of complex bottlenecks in a massive-scale distributed system.Collaborate closely with various engineering groups throughout the product development lifecycle, from requirements to release.