Principal Software Architect, Cortex Attack Surface

Palo Alto Networks; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 147,000 - 238,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Cortex Attack Surface Management team. You will design and scale distributed systems, build high-throughput ingestion pipelines, and transform raw signals into actionable intelligence.

You will own end-to-end development, from architecture to deployment, and mentor other engineers while advancing CI/CD and cloud-native practices. This role offers collaboration with security teams to prevent attacks and drive production-ready

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Proficiency in Python and Go.
• Experience designing RESTful APIs and microservices architectures.
• Building and maintaining data pipelines and ETL processes.
• Ability to lead across research, design, prototyping, and implementation phases.
• Expertise with CI/CD, automated testing, and agile methodologies.
• Working knowledge of at least one major cloud platform (GCP, AWS, or Azure), preferably GCP.
• Proven experience driving design and implementation of technical solutions amid ambiguity.
• Proven technical leadership and mentoring experience.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain the core services and data pipelines.
• Lead architecture strategy sessions—work with colleagues to design solutions for Cortex modules.
• Collaborate with your team to solve problems, reduce technical debt, and evolve development practices.
• Drive technical best practices and evangelize new technologies within the engineering organization.
• Collaborate with other engineers and ensure your team delivers high-quality output.
• Take ownership of projects, drive them to completion, and support them in production.

Skills

Python

Go

API design

RESTful APIs

Microservices

Data pipelines

ETL

CI/CD

Automated testing

Agile methodologies

Cloud platforms

GCP

AWS

Azure

Leadership

Mentoring

Kubernetes

Tools

Kubernetes

Job description

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Cortex Attack Surface Management team. You will design and scale distributed systems, build high-throughput ingestion pipelines, and transform raw signals into actionable intelligence.

You will own end-to-end development, from architecture to deployment, and mentor other engineers while advancing CI/CD and cloud-native practices. This role offers collaboration with security teams to prevent attacks and drive production-ready