Lead Architect, Cortex Platform & AI-Powered Security

Palo Alto Networks; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 249,000 - 341,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks in Santa Clara, CA, seeks a Distinguished Engineer for the Cortex Platform to drive innovation, architecture, and scaling of our AI‑powered security products. You will design shared infrastructures and tackle complex backend challenges to deliver value to thousands of enterprise customers.

You will advance AI‑native architectures, optimize data pipelines, and guide engineering teams across multiple services.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 14+ years of professional software engineering experience, focused on distributed, cloud‑native application development.
• Expert‑level programming skills in Python, Go, with experience building large‑scale distributed systems.

Responsibilities

• Drive long‑term technical vision and architecture for Cortex platforms and services.
• Design scalable, secure distributed systems for processing massive data volumes.
• Serve as a technical leader, providing consultation and collaboration across engineering teams.
• Lead cross‑team architecture decisions balancing scalability, performance, and velocity.
• Architect and optimize cloud‑native infrastructure, data pipelines, and real‑time analytics.
• Own and resolve complex technical challenges spanning multiple services and teams.
• Drive adoption of AI‑native architectures and intelligent automation.
• Identify opportunities to apply AI to accelerate development and operations.

Skills

Python

Go

Distributed systems

Cloud computing

Leadership

Communication

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field

Tools

ElasticSearch

Google Pub/Sub

Kubernetes

Job description

Palo Alto Networks in Santa Clara, CA, seeks a Distinguished Engineer for the Cortex Platform to drive innovation, architecture, and scaling of our AI‑powered security products. You will design shared infrastructures and tackle complex backend challenges to deliver value to thousands of enterprise customers.

You will advance AI‑native architectures, optimize data pipelines, and guide engineering teams across multiple services.