Principal Backend Engineer for AI Security Platform

Palo Alto Networks; Santa Clara (CA); Hybrid; USD 156,000 - 253,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks is building AI-powered security platforms and needs senior engineers to lead backend and distributed system work. You will design scalable services, orchestrate deployments, and interface with high-throughput data pipelines in a hybrid on-site role based in Santa Clara, CA.

As part of the AIRS team, you will craft the control plane, microservices, and runtime environments that power next-generation AI security solutions at scale.

Qualifications

• BS/MS in Computer Science or related field with 8+ years of backend/distributed systems experience.
• Proficient in Go or Python.
• Experience building RESTful APIs, gRPC services, and event-driven microservices.
• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable backend services and APIs.
• Develop the robust control plane coordinating deployments across environments.
• Write clean, secure code in Go or Python for large-scale systems.
• Architect and deploy microservices on Kubernetes in GCP.
• Integrate data pipelines and management consoles with high throughput.
• Promote CI/CD, automated testing, and observability best practices.

Skills

Go

Python

REST APIs

gRPC

Microservices

Docker

Kubernetes

Education

BS/MS in Computer Science

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

GCP

BigQuery

Bigtable

Spanner

Job description

Palo Alto Networks is building AI-powered security platforms and needs senior engineers to lead backend and distributed system work. You will design scalable services, orchestrate deployments, and interface with high-throughput data pipelines in a hybrid on-site role based in Santa Clara, CA.

As part of the AIRS team, you will craft the control plane, microservices, and runtime environments that power next-generation AI security solutions at scale.