Director of Cloud Security and Platform Engineering

Jobs Paloaltonetworks; United Kingdom; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Director of Engineering for Cortex Cloud to lead an engineering group of about 25 engineers working on Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM) and Cloud Network Security (CNS).

This role combines strategic leadership with deep technical expertise in large-scale distributed cloud systems and design, and you will drive roadmaps, architecture decisions, and delivery across US-facing enterprise projects.

Qualifications

• Experience leading backend teams in a large-scale software organization.
• 5+ years of hands-on software engineering with a systems-level foundation.
• Ability to plan, execute, and deliver complex roadmaps across distributed cloud products end-to-end.
• 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.

Responsibilities

• Build, mentor, and lead backend engineering teams, fostering a culture of empowerment and driving both individual growth and collective impact.
• Partner closely with Product Management and cross-functional teams 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, 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 enterprise customers—including some of the largest companies in the US—to lead technical deep dives, review architecture, and influence future product direction.
• Foster a culture of high engineering standards, accountability, and continuous improvement, with a strong emphasis on quality and security.

Skills

Backend leadership

Distributed systems

Cloud architectures

Kubernetes security

Stakeholder alignment

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

GCP

AWS

Azure

Job description

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Director of Engineering for Cortex Cloud to lead an engineering group of about 25 engineers working on Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM) and Cloud Network Security (CNS).

This role combines strategic leadership with deep technical expertise in large-scale distributed cloud systems and design, and you will drive roadmaps, architecture decisions, and delivery across US-facing enterprise projects.