Principal/Sr. Principal AI Engineer - IT Business Applications

Palo Alto Networks; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 185,000 - 299,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks is hiring AI Engineers at Principal/Senior Principal levels for the IT Business Applications team. You will design and deliver production AI solutions using LLMs, agents, and RAG to support Marketing, Sales, and the lead-to-cash lifecycle.

This hands-on technical leadership role requires translating requirements into scalable architecture, partnering with stakeholders, and delivering end-to-end production operations.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience for Principal; 15+ for Sr. Principal (with degrees as noted).
• Track record of architecting and shipping enterprise-grade distributed systems.
• Expert Python and cloud-native microservices; experience with LLMs and multi-agent systems.

Responsibilities

• Architect and govern enterprise AI platforms and unified API strategies.
• Lead GenAI transformations across GTM workflows.
• Design cost and performance optimization engines for AI queries.
• Set security standards for AI safety and data protection.
• Communicate technical visions to executives and uplift engineering capabilities.

Skills

Technical leadership

Python

Cloud-native

AI systems

Distributed systems

Education

Bachelor's/Master's/PhD in CS

Tools

LangChain

LangGraph

AWS

Azure

GCP

Job description

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks® We're united by a shared mission—to protect our digital way of life. We thrive at the intersection of innovation and impact, solving real-world problems with cutting-edge technology and bold thinking. Here, everyone has a voice, and every idea counts. If you're ready to do the most meaningful work of your career alongside people who are just as passionate as you are, you're in the right place.

Who We Are

In order to be the cybersecurity partner of choice, we must trailblaze the path and shape the future of our industry. This is something our employees work at each day and is defined by our values: Disruption, Collaboration, Execution, Integrity, and Inclusion. We weave AI into the fabric of everything we do and use it to augment the impact every individual can have. If you are passionate about solving real-world problems and ideating beside the best and the brightest, we invite you to join us! We believe collaboration thrives in person. That's why most of our teams work from the office full time, with flexibility when it's needed. This model supports real-time problem-solving, stronger relationships, and the kind of precision that drives great outcomes.

Job Summary

We are hiring AI Engineers at the Principal and Senior Principal levels to join our IT Business Applications team. This group builds and operates the technology platforms that power Marketing, Sales, and the full Lead-to-Cash lifecycle.

This is a solutions engineering role, not a data science or ML research role. You will act as a hands-on technical leader who uses AI as building blocks—LLMs, agents, RAG, embeddings to deliver production solutions that solve real business problems. You will partner directly with business and product stakeholders, translate requirements into scalable architecture, and own delivery end-to-end from design through production operations.

You will move beyond traditional software engineering to design intelligent, agentic workflows that revolutionize our Go-To-Market (GTM) and customer experience processes—ensuring our platforms are the most secure and efficient in the industry, directly improving operational revenue generation.

Your Impact

• Strategic Architecture & Vision: Architect and govern the enterprise Proxy-First AI Ecosystem and unified API strategies, securing total model-vendor independence. Lead build-vs-buy decisions and establish standard architecture patterns across agentic, RAG, hybrid, and traditional systems.
• Lead-to-Cash Transformation: Spearhead multi-system GenAI transformations across marketing, sales compensation, and quote-to-cash workflows. Architect advanced reasoning pipelines, knowledge graphs, and autonomous multi-agent networks.
• Enterprise AI Observability & Optimization: Establish enterprise-wide "LLM as a Judge" evaluation standards and golden datasets. Design cost and performance optimization engines that dynamically route queries based on task complexity.
• Security Architecture & Defense: Set security standards for AI safety, PII protection, and adversarial defense (keyword filtering, behavioral analysis, adversarial training).
• Strategic Leadership & Influence: Lead high-ambiguity, cross-team technical initiatives. Communicate technical visions and business trade-offs directly to executive stakeholders while elevating engineering capabilities across the entire organization.

Qualifications

Required Experience

• Principal: 12+ years of experience (or 8+ with a Master's degree).
• Sr. Principal: 15+ years of experience (or 12+ with a Master's, 8+ with a PhD).
• Technical Leadership: Track record of architecting and shipping complex, enterprise-grade distributed systems and full-stack AI platforms.
• Technical Mastery: Expert Python capabilities plus mastery of additional core languages (Go, Java, Node.js). Deep expertise in cloud-native microservices (AWS/Azure/GCP) and distributed architecture.
• AI & Agentic Systems: Proven mastery of LLMs (GPT-4, Llama 3, Claude), orchestration (LangChain, LangGraph), multi-agent architectures, and dynamic retrieval pipelines.
• Domain & Strategy: Strong evaluation, and fine-tuning/RAG patterns.
• Education: Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science or a related field.

Compensation Disclosure

The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, experience, and work location. For candidates who receive an offer at the posted level, the starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/commissioned roles) is expected to be the annual range listed below. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.

$185,200.00 - $299,475.00/yr

Our Commitment

We're trailblazers that dream big, take risks, and challenge cybersecurity's status quo. It's simple: we can't accomplish our mission without diverse teams innovating, together.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all qualified individuals with a disability. If you require assistance or accommodation due to a disability or special need, please contact us at [e-mail].

Palo Alto Networks is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Is role eligible for Immigration Sponsorship?: Yes