Principal Backend Engineer, Cortex Platform

Socket.dev; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 147,000 - 238,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Principal Backend Engineer to join the Cortex backend engineering group, building and scaling the Cortex Platform, including XSOAR, XDR, and XSIAM, with a focus on delivering value to thousands of customers.

You will lead end-to-end backend development, collaborate across teams, and mentor engineers while exploring new technologies to raise the bar for performance and reliability.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• 7+ years of Go and/or Python programming.
• Experience with major cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, Azure).
• Experience with Microservices architecture (Kubernetes, Docker, Serverless).
• Strong computer science fundamentals and experience with distributed computing concepts.

Responsibilities

• Lead the end-to-end backend development of features and components, from design and development to testing, deployment, and maintenance.
• Collaborate effectively with peers across diverse teams and disciplines to shape solutions and ensure seamless integration with other product components.
• Drive team-wide technical excellence by actively participating in code reviews, design reviews, and architectural decisions.
• Maintain a production-first mindset, providing real‑time mitigation and solutions to production issues to ensure platform stability and customer satisfaction.
• Challenge the status quo by exploring and applying new technologies and methodologies to innovate and scale the Cortex Platform.
• Simplify complex systems by designing and implementing elegant, scalable, and maintainable backend services.
• Mentor junior engineers, empowering others by sharing knowledge and fostering a culture of technical growth and accountability.

Skills

Go

Python

Cloud platforms

Kubernetes

Docker

Distributed computing

Security principles

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Master's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Kafka

Splunk

Flink

BigQuery

Elasticsearch

CI/CD tools

Infrastructure-as-code

Job description

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Principal Backend Engineer to join the Cortex backend engineering group, building and scaling the Cortex Platform, including XSOAR, XDR, and XSIAM, with a focus on delivering value to thousands of customers.

You will lead end-to-end backend development, collaborate across teams, and mentor engineers while exploring new technologies to raise the bar for performance and reliability.