Senior Principal Engineer, Developer Productivity

Palo Alto Networks, Inc.; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 243,000 - 335,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks, Inc. is seeking a senior software engineer to advance agentic AI capabilities across developer platforms, ensuring safe, observable, and scalable workflows.

You will design, evaluate, and integrate AI agents, lead modernization efforts of critical systems, and collaborate with security, legal, and product teams to maintain production-grade reliability. The role demands deep expertise in AI-enabled tooling, large language models, distributed systems, and secure, compliant

Qualifications

• 15 years of software engineering experience with advanced degree or equivalent impact.
• Senior/Principal level experience across multiple teams or domains.
• Experience with AI-enabled developer tooling and large language models.
• Ability to influence technical direction without direct authority.
• Strong communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Design, prototype, and productionize AI agents and workflows across the SDLC.
• Build reusable agent skills, integrations, and reference implementations.
• Work directly in codebases on high-value prototypes and complex problems.
• Evaluate AI platforms and models for capability, security, and enterprise fit.
• Integrate AI capabilities into developer platforms and CI/CD tooling.
• Lead modernization initiatives while preserving business continuity.
• Partner with Security, Legal, Risk, and Compliance teams for practical controls.
• Ensure changes meet testing, review, and production standards.

Skills

Hands-on software engineering

Large language model APIs

Agent orchestration

Context engineering

Evaluation frameworks

AI observability

Developer workflows integration

Distributed systems

CI/CD

Education

PhD / MS / BS in software engineering or related field

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

Responsibilities

Build Agentic SDLC Capabilities

• Design, prototype, and productionize AI agents and workflows for requirements, coding, code review, testing, documentation, deployment, and operations.
• Build reusable agent skills, integrations, evaluation harnesses, templates, and reference implementations.
• Work directly in codebases on high-value prototypes, critical components, integrations, and difficult engineering problems.
• Evaluate coding assistants, agent platforms, models, and frameworks based on capability, security, reliability, cost, and enterprise fit.
• Integrate approved AI capabilities into developer platforms, repositories, integrated development environments, CI/CD pipelines, and operational tooling.

Modernize Critical Systems

• Apply AI-assisted analysis to uncover undocumented code behavior, dependencies, business rules, and operational failure modes.
• Convert discovered knowledge into tests, technical documentation, dependency maps, and actionable modernization plans.
• Lead targeted language, framework, architecture, and test-modernization initiatives while protecting business continuity.
• Establish safe practices for AI-assisted refactoring, migration, test generation, and technical-debt reduction.
• Partner with application owners and business stakeholders to validate that modernization preserves intended behavior.

Establish Safe and Reliable Agentic Workflows

• Implement controls such as least-privilege access, sandboxing, approval checkpoints, time and cost limits, audit trails, and safe rollback.
• Build evaluation frameworks that measure correctness, security, reliability, latency, cost, and workflow effectiveness.
• Partner with Security, Privacy, Legal, Risk, and Compliance teams to translate policies into practical engineering controls.
• Ensure AI-generated changes meet established standards for testing, review, security, and production readiness.
• Design agent workflows that fail safely and remain observable, traceable, and understandable to human operators.

Drive Adoption and Developer Productivity

• Work with engineering teams to identify and implement high-value AI use cases across a phased adoption model, from individual assistance to governed agentic workflows.
• Develop reusable patterns and golden paths that teams can adopt without recreating infrastructure or controls.
• Mentor engineers through architecture reviews, pairing, code reviews, workshops, and technical demonstrations.
• Build a community of practitioners who can scale successful methods across the organization.
• Communicate technical decisions, tradeoffs, progress, and risks to engineering leaders, executives, and business stakeholders.

Measure Engineering Outcomes

• Establish baselines and success criteria before introducing new AI workflows.
• Measure outcomes through lead time, review cycle time, test effectiveness, change-failure rate, security findings, recovery time, developer experience, and operating cost.
• Run controlled pilots and use the results to determine whether capabilities should be expanded, redesigned, or retired.
• Distinguish meaningful engineering improvement from activity measures such as tool usage, prompt counts, or generated code volume.

Contribute to External Technical Leadership

• Represent the organization in selected conferences, technical forums, partner discussions, and industry communities.
• Publish practical technical content, reference architectures, case studies, and lessons learned.
• Bring relevant industry practices and emerging technologies back into the organization.
• Build external credibility through demonstrated engineering outcomes and clear technical guidance.

Success in This Role

• Production-ready AI engineering workflows deliver measurable improvements in delivery speed, quality, developer experience, or operational reliability.
• Reusable patterns for agent orchestration, evaluation, security, and observability are adopted by multiple engineering teams.
• Brownfield modernization and greenfield development both benefit from safe, repeatable AI-enabled workflows.
• Engineering teams can adopt approved AI capabilities consistently without weakening security, compliance, or production standards.
• Engineering and business leaders have a credible measurement framework for AI-enabled productivity, quality, and cost.
• Senior engineers and architects view this role as a trusted source of hands-on technical guidance.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• 15 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 12 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 8 years experience in software engineering field, or equivalent demonstrated technical impact.
• Experience operating at Senior Principal, Principal or equivalent scope across multiple teams or engineering domains.
• Strong hands-on software-engineering skills and a recent record of building and operating production systems.
• Practical experience with large language model APIs, tool-using agents, agent orchestration, context engineering, evaluation frameworks, and AI observability.
• Experience integrating AI capabilities into developer workflows, engineering platforms, or enterprise applications.
• Strong knowledge of distributed systems, APIs, event-driven architectures, CI/CD, cloud infrastructure, testing, observability, and production operations.
• Experience modernizing complex, business-critical, or poorly documented systems.
• Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across organizations without direct authority.
• Clear communication with engineering, executive, and non-technical audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience introducing AI-assisted or agentic development workflows across a large or regulated enterprise.
• Experience with enterprise platforms such as ERP, CRM, HRIS, CLM, finance, or customer-support systems.
• Experience implementing AI security controls for data protection, permission boundaries, auditability, and prompt-injection defenses.
• Familiarity with developer-productivity frameworks such as DORA and SPACE.
• Technical publications, open-source contributions, conference presentations, or other evidence of external engineering leadership.

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/com-issioned 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.

$243,000.00 - $335,000.00/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