Distinguished Engineer - Cortex Cloud & AI Systems

Jobs Paloaltonetworks; United Kingdom; Hybrid; GBP 187,000 - 256,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Distinguished Engineer to join the Cortex Cloud team as a senior technical leader and hands-on expert. You will embed within critical initiatives, accelerating delivery and elevating engineering standards across the organization.

By combining deep technical expertise with strategic vision, you will architect scalable AI-driven systems, resolve complex challenges, and optimize performance in cloud environments.

Qualifications

• Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills to influence engineers, managers, and executives without formal authority.
• Deep, practical AI expertise, including building AI systems and AI-driven engineering processes.
• Broad technical depth across architecture, distributed systems, cloud, and data with quick technology decisions.
• Deep expertise in OS internals, networking, concurrency, storage, database internals, low-level debugging, and performance profiling.
• Extensive experience interviewing senior engineers and upholding high engineering standards.

Responsibilities

• Embed in high-profile projects to set technical direction and deliver critical-path code.
• Coordinate dependencies and blockers for focused, timely delivery across teams.
• Lead AI-native initiatives to multiply engineering productivity.
• Design and build AI-driven systems that transform software development, testing, and shipping.
• Identify and drive strategic initiatives to improve engineering velocity across the organization.
• Act as a trusted technical advisor to leadership and participate in senior technical interviews.
• Mentor engineers through hands-on collaboration to raise technical standards.

Skills

AI systems

Cloud architecture

Distributed systems

OS internals

Mentoring

Senior interviews

Tools

DevOps practices

Data platforms

Job description

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Distinguished Engineer to join the Cortex Cloud team as a senior technical leader and hands-on expert. You will embed within critical initiatives, accelerating delivery and elevating engineering standards across the organization.

By combining deep technical expertise with strategic vision, you will architect scalable AI-driven systems, resolve complex challenges, and optimize performance in cloud environments.