Principal Backend Engineer — Secure Data Pipelines

CamWebDir; California (MO); On-site; USD 147,000 - 238,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to drive the design of scalable backend systems for the Cortex Xpanse ASM platform. You will architect, scale, and orchestrate internet-scale discovery and scanning infrastructure, working with product managers and leadership on mission-critical initiatives.

You will lead distributed data pipelines, mentor engineers, and own complex projects from inception to production, ensuring high performance, reliability, and impact on the overall

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience building backend systems.
• Proficiency in Java or Golang is preferred, though strong experience with other modern backend languages is welcome.
• Experience building data pipelines for real-time streaming or batch processing.
• Experience with distributed systems, API design, and decoupling complex data architectures.
• Experience with at least one major cloud platform (GCP, AWS, or Azure).

Responsibilities

• Build, optimize, and scale distributed backend scanning systems in Go.
• Design and develop robust data collection pipelines using Apache Beam and Java multithreading frameworks.
• Investigate new data sources and perform data analysis to estimate customer impact.
• Take ownership of projects, drive them to completion, and support them in production.
• Partner with engineering peers and product managers to define product strategy and enable the creation of new customer-facing features.
• Mentor and grow engineers, setting a high bar for technical excellence, architecture design, and system reliability.

Skills

Java

Golang

Data pipelines

Distributed systems

API design

Cloud platforms

Tools

Apache Beam

BigQuery

PostgreSQL

MySQL

BigTable

Kubernetes

Terraform

Job description

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to drive the design of scalable backend systems for the Cortex Xpanse ASM platform. You will architect, scale, and orchestrate internet-scale discovery and scanning infrastructure, working with product managers and leadership on mission-critical initiatives.

You will lead distributed data pipelines, mentor engineers, and own complex projects from inception to production, ensuring high performance, reliability, and impact on the overall