Senior Principal Backend Architect, IAM Platform

Palo Alto Networks; Baltimore (MD); On-site; USD 170,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a senior technical leader for the Identity & Access Management platform. You will set architectural direction, mentor engineers, and own high-stakes initiatives across multiple teams deployed on Kubernetes, with Go in production and cloud platforms like AWS and GCP.

This role is remote; teams collaborate across geographies to deliver secure, scalable access control solutions, SSO, and SCIM coverage while balancing customer needs with reliability and security.

Qualifications

• Track record of taking ambitious IAM projects to production.
• Ability to drive multi-team initiatives with customers and partners.
• Experience with large scale distributed systems, balancing reliability, security and cost.
• Fluent in system-level languages and able to mentor engineers.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and evolution of granular access control framework.
• Set architectural direction for the platform over 1–3 years.
• Mentor engineers and grow the IAM team through hiring and onboarding.
• Ensure reliability, monitor SLOs, and address security risks.
• Collaborate with PMs to align roadmaps with customer needs.
• Partner with infrastructure teams to plan and implement scalable solutions.

Skills

Architecture direction

Cross-team leadership

Go

Kubernetes

Cloud platforms

Security

IAM

Tools

Go

Kubernetes

AWS

GCP

Job description

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a senior technical leader for the Identity & Access Management platform. You will set architectural direction, mentor engineers, and own high-stakes initiatives across multiple teams deployed on Kubernetes, with Go in production and cloud platforms like AWS and GCP.

This role is remote; teams collaborate across geographies to deliver secure, scalable access control solutions, SSO, and SCIM coverage while balancing customer needs with reliability and security.