Principal Engineer: Distributed Systems & Data Pipelines

Palo Alto Networks; California (MO); On-site; USD 147,000 - 238,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Cortex Xpanse ASM platform. You will architect and scale distributed backends, building high-throughput data pipelines to map the internet and enable new customer-facing features.

You will mentor engineers and collaborate with product managers to drive mission-critical initiatives that impact the platform’s success. This role emphasizes technical excellence, reliability, and collaboration in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of backend software engineering experience.
• Proficiency in Java or Go; other modern backends welcome.
• Experience with 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 cloud platform (GCP, AWS, or Azure).

Responsibilities

• Build, scale, and maintain distributed backend scanning systems in Go.
• Design data pipelines using Apache Beam and Java multithreading frameworks.
• Investigate new data sources and 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 new customer-facing features.
• Mentor and grow engineers, setting a high bar for technical excellence.

Skills

Backend engineering

Java / Go

Data pipelines

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms (GCP/AWS/AZURE)

Tools

Apache Beam

Kubernetes

Terraform

BigQuery

PostgreSQL

MySQL

BigTable

Job description

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Cortex Xpanse ASM platform. You will architect and scale distributed backends, building high-throughput data pipelines to map the internet and enable new customer-facing features.

You will mentor engineers and collaborate with product managers to drive mission-critical initiatives that impact the platform’s success. This role emphasizes technical excellence, reliability, and collaboration in a fast-paced environment.