Principal Backend Architect for AI Runtime Security

Palo Alto Networks, Inc.; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 147,000 - 238,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks in Santa Clara, CA, is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Prisma AIRS Runtime Security team. You will partner with executive leadership, product management, UX designers, ML engineers and cross-functional teams to design and deliver enterprise-grade AI security solutions.

Lead architecture, mentor engineers, drive performance, scale, and implement best practices. This role demands deep distributed-systems expertise, cloud-native patterns, and a passion for tackling

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field with 10+ years of relevant industry experience, or a Master's degree with 8+ years of experience
• Deep domain expertise in designing, building, and operating highly scalable, fault-tolerant distributed systems, with exceptional programming skills in Python or Golang.
• Proven track record of designing enterprise-wide Microservices architectures, building, and deploying high-throughput, globally scaled APIs to meet strict SLOs, maximize throughput, and reduce compute costs in production.
• Broad experience architecting cloud-native solutions (GCP preferred), relational/NoSQL databases, container management (Kubernetes), enterprise CI/CD (GitLab, ArgoCD), and full-stack observability (Grafana, Prometheus).
• Demonstrated ability to drive consensus across multi-team boundaries, solve ambiguous technical problems, and mentor senior engineering talent.
• Hands-on experience architecting, building, and deploying complex Agentic workflows, tool-use pipelines, or multi-agent orchestrations.

Responsibilities

• Lead cross-functional collaboration with Product Management, SRE, ML, and Quality Engineering teams to deliver new, enterprise-grade security as a service offerings in a timely fashion.
• Tackle complex, ambiguous technical challenges across system boundaries, translating high-level product and security vision into resilient, production-ready backend architectures.
• Proactively identify technical bottlenecks and scaling opportunities, driving continuous performance and efficiency optimizations to maximize throughput, lower latency, and streamline resource utilization at scale.
• Evangelize and implement modern engineering best practices, including agentic coding workflows and spec-driven development within the team.
• Lead the architectural design and execution of large-scale enterprise systems with model serving infrastructure, ensuring seamless, scalable integration across backend services and partner engineering services.
• Mentor senior and junior engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous learning within the team.

Skills

Python

Golang

Distributed systems

Microservices

Kubernetes

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Master's degree

Tools

GitLab

ArgoCD

Grafana

Prometheus

Kubernetes

Job description

Palo Alto Networks in Santa Clara, CA, is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Prisma AIRS Runtime Security team. You will partner with executive leadership, product management, UX designers, ML engineers and cross-functional teams to design and deliver enterprise-grade AI security solutions.

Lead architecture, mentor engineers, drive performance, scale, and implement best practices. This role demands deep distributed-systems expertise, cloud-native patterns, and a passion for tackling