Principal Software Engineer; Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Engineering

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

Your Career

We are seeking a rare hybrid practitioner: a
* Principal AI Systems Engineer & Strategist
* who bridges the gap between high‑level AI strategy and hands‑on, production‑grade autonomous systems engineering to join our Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Engineering (CIPE) organization. You will be the key architect of our strategy to embed intelligence into every stage of the developer lifecycle—from ideation and documentation to coding, testing, deployment, and observability.

Most enterprise AI initiatives fail not because of model quality, but due to poor use‑case selection, weak execution loop design, fragile context management, and an absence of robust governance. This role exists to change that ratio.

In this dual‑impact position, you will design the strategic roadmap for autonomous AI investments, architect production‑ready harness environments (control loops, state evaluation, dynamic context management, and fallback mechanics), and drive high‑value AI agent workflows from early pilot to resilient, production‑grade execution.

Your work will directly accelerate developer velocity, elevate our standards for software quality, and unlock new business opportunities by enabling the rapid integration of agentic AI into our products. This role carries executive‑level visibility and the autonomy to solve our most complex engineering challenges. If you are a recognized expert in developer platforms and are passionate about leveraging AI to redefine engineering efficiency at a global scale, we want to hear from you.

This role is located at our dynamic Santa Clara California headquarters campus, and in office 3 days a week.

1. Strategic Roadmap & Opportunity Selection

• AI Opportunity Mapping: Identify, score, and prioritize enterprise use cases across core business functions, tying each directly to measurable P&L metrics and ROI baselines.
• Build vs. Buy vs. Partner Strategy: Evaluate foundation models, framework architectures, and third‑party AI platforms to publish clear, defensible architectural and procurement recommendations.
• Business Case & Value Realization: Construct multi‑year ROI models (acquisition cost, latency overhead, inference cost, payback period) and continuously measure post‑deployment business lift.
• Risk, Compliance & Governance: Establish guardrails aligned with NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, and global regulatory frameworks (e.g., EU AI Act), ensuring data security, model alignment, and threat defense against prompt injection or logic escalation.
• Adoption & Change…