Senior Principal Backend Architect – Cortex Platform

Palo Alto Networks; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 184,000 - 297,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Senior Principal Backend Engineer for the Cortex group. You will lead backend development for Cortex XSOAR, XDR, and XSIAM, tackle complex problems, and contribute to shared infrastructures impacting thousands of customers.

The role requires a can-do attitude, mentorship, and a passion for solving challenging cybersecurity threats, with a focus on scalable data platforms and API services.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical field.
• 14+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a focus on distributed, cloud-native application development.
• Expert-level programming skills in Python, Go, or Java, with proven experience building large-scale distributed systems.
• Extensive experience with cloud development, including REST APIs, databases, serverless computing, and microservices architectures.

Responsibilities

• Serve as an acknowledged technical leader, providing consultation and proactively collaborating across engineering teams to ensure alignment.
• Drive the full lifecycle of projects from requirements gathering to final design and implementation, acting as a project lead or mentor.
• Lead the alignment of planned work across the product by partnering with product management, UX design, and engineering stakeholders.
• Utilize a big-picture perspective to identify, analyze, and provide practical solutions for complex existing and impending technical problems.
• Design, build, and optimize highly scalable data models and queries using technologies such as MySQL and BigQuery, focusing on the details to ensure performance.
• Develop robust business logic and API endpoints using Python and Flask, and build high-performance backend services using Go.
• Proactively identify, articulate, and mitigate risks in projects to ensure smooth execution and high-quality output.
• Mentor and empower other engineers across the department, fostering a culture of technical excellence and applied learning.

Skills

Python

Go

Java

Distributed systems

Technical leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Master's degree

Tools

ElasticSearch

Google Pub/Sub

Job description

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Senior Principal Backend Engineer for the Cortex group. You will lead backend development for Cortex XSOAR, XDR, and XSIAM, tackle complex problems, and contribute to shared infrastructures impacting thousands of customers.

The role requires a can-do attitude, mentorship, and a passion for solving challenging cybersecurity threats, with a focus on scalable data platforms and API services.