Senior Principal Cloud Architect; Office CPO: Innovation Team

Senior Principal Cloud Architect (Office of the CPO: Innovation Team)

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.

Company Description

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

As a Principal Cloud Architect in the Innovation Team, you will lead the secure software and infrastructure architecture for our most advanced experiments. You will define and govern the secure infrastructure backbone, driving the architectural design and rapid prototyping of cloud-native security solutions. You will be instrumental in fusing rigorous enterprise security standards and expert software architecture design with agile development to accelerate our next‑generation product roadmap.

Your Impact

• Secure Software Architecture & Design:
  Serve as the principal architect for new solutions, translating complex security requirements into high‑level, modular software and system designs. Govern the architectural principles for performance, reliability, and security across the entire application stack.
• Architect & Deploy Secure Infrastructure:
  Design and build resilient, secure-by-design cloud infrastructure primarily on Google Cloud Platform, while establishing multi‑cloud interoperability patterns (AWS, Azure) to support diverse customer environments.
• Rapid Prototyping & Software Development:
  Take abstract ideas and rapidly build functional Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) and Proofs of Concept (PoCs), writing production‑grade code (with a focus on Python) for custom automation, application logic, and integration layers. Validate new security technologies, acting as the bridge between "what if" and "what works."
• Dev Sec Ops  & Automation:
  Champion a "shift‑left" methodology by building automated CI/CD pipelines, container security strategies, and Infrastructure‑as‑Code (Terraform/Ansible) that ensure speed never compromises safety.
• Strategic
  
  Collaboration:
  
  Partner deeply with Info Sec teams to bake governance into experimental architectures, and collaborate with Sales Architects to translate technical innovations into scalable, market‑ready solutions.
• Technology Evaluation:
  Continuously research emerging cloud security tools and architectures to maintain a cutting‑edge technology stack for the team.
• Mentorship & Vision:
  Provide technical leadership and architectural mentorship to senior engineers and communicate complex architectural trade‑offs to executive stakeholders and product leadership.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering, cloud architecture, or site reliability engineering (SRE), with a specific focus on designing and implementing security‑centric software systems and infrastructure.
• Cloud Mastery:
  Deep expertise in Google Cloud Platform, AWS, and/or Azure (Google Cloud Platform preferred).
• Architecture Mastery:
  Proven experience in designing complex, highly available, and scalable distributed systems. Ability to document and defend architectural decisions across the software stack.
• Security Engineering Depth:
  Hands‑on experience designing and implementing core security controls (e.g., authentication/authorization, secrets management, data encryption in transit/at rest) within a cloud‑native application context.
• Coding:
  Strong full‑stack programming proficiency with Python (required); additional experience with Go, Node.js, or modern frontend frameworks (React/Vue) is preferred.
• Dev Sec Ops  Authority:
  Proven background in automation and orchestration, including Kubernetes, Docker, and CI/CD security scanning tools.
• Versatility: A demonstrated ability to pivot between…