Principal Backend Engineer - Machine Identity Platform

Socket.dev; Santa Clara (CA); Hybrid; USD 210,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare plans

On-site gym

Professional development

Equity grants

ESPP

401(k) match

Paid time off

On-site perks

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead the Machine Identity Security control plane. You will design scalable backend services, APIs, and integrations, guiding architectural decisions across teams and focusing on reliability and performance under high load.

You will mentor engineers, shape API exposure to external tools, and drive CI/CD improvements while collaborating with product, platform and security teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Deep experience designing and scaling distributed systems and microservices architectures.
• Experience building or operating systems under real production load, including high request throughput, concurrency, and performance optimization at scale.
• Strong system design expertise, including API design, performance optimization, and scalability patterns.
• Proven ability to lead large-scale system design efforts and influence technical direction across multiple teams or services.
• Experience building and supporting APIs, SDKs, and integrations used by internal and external customers.
• Familiarity with identity, authentication, or security systems (SAML, OAuth, certificate management) is a plus.
• Strong experience building backend services and APIs using Java (primary); Go experience is a plus.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), ideally in SaaS environments.
• 8+ years of professional experience in software development, with demonstrated ownership of complex backend or control plane systems.
• Experience with data streaming, messaging systems, or real-time processing (e.g., Kafka).
• Experience with CI/CD, containerization (Docker), and orchestration (Kubernetes).
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to operate effectively in a collaborative, fast-paced environment.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and evolution of scalable backend services, APIs, and integrations for machine identity security control plane.
• Own and drive backend architecture and system design for control plane services, focusing on scalability, reliability, and extensibility.
• Define APIs, manage service interactions, and ensure reliability under load across distributed environments.
• Build and guide integrations between the control plane and external systems/tools (e.g., Terraform, Ansible, enterprise platforms).
• Partner with product, platform, and security teams to evolve control plane capabilities and long-term system direction.
• Drive consistency in design patterns, service communication, and data handling at platform level.
• Diagnose and resolve complex technical issues across distributed control plane services; mentor engineers and raise technical bar.
• Drive CI/CD pipelines and engineering standards; evolve modern development tooling with security and maintainability in mind.

Skills

Distributed systems

Microservices

API design

Backend services

Java

Go

Cloud platforms

CI/CD

Kubernetes

Leadership

Mentoring

Security concepts

Real-time processing

Data streaming

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Eng or equivalent

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

APIs & SDKs

Job description

Palo Alto Networks seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead the Machine Identity Security control plane. You will design scalable backend services, APIs, and integrations, guiding architectural decisions across teams and focusing on reliability and performance under high load.

You will mentor engineers, shape API exposure to external tools, and drive CI/CD improvements while collaborating with product, platform and security teams.