Senior Staff Automation Engineer/SDET

Palo Alto Networks, Inc.; Santa Clara (CA); Hybrid; USD 137,000 - 221,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks, Inc. is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer in Santa Clara, CA to build automation frameworks, performance tooling, and validation infrastructure for enterprise software. You’ll write production-quality code daily to enable secure, scalable, and reliable backend services and distributed systems.

You’ll partner with Development, DevOps, and Security teams to ensure design for observability, reliability, and testability while enhancing CI/CD pipelines and developer tooling.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in Software Engineering, SDET, or related engineering disciplines.
• Proficient in Python, Java, Go, or other modern languages with reusable libraries and tooling.
• Experience designing automation and testing frameworks for backend services, APIs, and distributed systems.
• Strong understanding of test strategy across unit to security testing in CI/CD environments.
• Solid knowledge of distributed systems, microservices, REST APIs, and modern architectures.
• Proficiency with Linux, Windows environments, networking, and debugging.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain automation frameworks for backend and cloud-native apps.
• Build enterprise-scale validation environments and provisioning/configuration tooling.
• Develop automation validating functionality, scalability, resiliency, performance, and security.
• Simulate complex customer environments across Linux, Windows, networking, PKI, and cloud infra.
• Collaborate with Dev, DevOps, and Security to ensure scalable, observable products.
• Enhance CI/CD pipelines and tooling to boost productivity and release confidence.
• Lead architecture/design reviews and mentor engineers on automation best practices.

Skills

Python

Java

Go

Distributed systems

CI/CD

Linux

Docker

Kubernetes

Cloud platforms

Tools

GitHub Actions

Jenkins

GitLab CI

Terraform

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

Your Career

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.

Our Machine Identity platform secures identities, certificates, and cryptographic assets for many of the world's largest enterprises. As organizations increasingly rely on distributed systems and cloud-native applications, ensuring these products perform reliably across complex enterprise environments is critical.

We're looking for a Senior Staff Software Engineer to build the automation frameworks, performance tooling, and enterprise validation infrastructure that enable our engineering teams to deliver secure, scalable, and highly reliable software.

This is a hands-on software engineering role where you'll write production-quality code every day to build automation for backend services, distributed systems, and enterprise infrastructure. Rather than focusing on traditional UI test automation, you'll engineer the frameworks, tooling, and environments that validate complex enterprise deployments at scale.

If you've built automation, performance, or validation frameworks for enterprise software, networking, PKI, identity, cloud infrastructure, or cybersecurity products, we'd love to hear from you.

Your Impact

As a Senior Staff Software Engineer, you will:

• Design, develop, and maintain automation frameworks for backend services, distributed systems, and cloud-native applications.

• Build software that provisions, configures, and manages enterprise-scale validation environments.

• Develop automation that validates functionality, scalability, resiliency, performance, security, and operational readiness.

• Simulate complex customer environments spanning Linux, Windows, networking, PKI, Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, and distributed architectures.

• Partner closely with Development, DevOps, and Security Engineering teams to ensure products are designed for scalability, reliability, observability, and testability.

• Enhance CI/CD pipelines and engineering tooling that improve developer productivity and release confidence.

• Analyze and debug complex issues spanning software, infrastructure, networking, operating systems, cloud services, and distributed applications.

• Participate in architecture reviews, technical design discussions, and code reviews while mentoring engineers on software engineering and automation best practices.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in Software Engineering, Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET), Performance Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, Platform Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or a related technical discipline.
• Strong software engineering skills developing production-quality software using Python, Java, Go, or other modern programming languages, including experience building reusable libraries, frameworks, APIs, or tooling. Experience across multiple programming languages is highly valued.
• Experience designing and building automation and integration testing frameworks for backend services, APIs, distributed systems, cloud-native applications, or enterprise software.
• Strong understanding of test strategy across unit, integration, system, end-to-end, performance, scalability, resiliency, and security testing, including how to determine the appropriate level of validation within a modern CI/CD environment.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, microservices, REST APIs, and modern software architectures.
• Strong understanding of networking fundamentals, including TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP/S, TLS, certificate-based authentication, and secure communications.
• Hands‑on Linux experience, including command‑line troubleshooting, system and process investigation, networking diagnostics, and debugging applications or services in Linux environments, along with experience working in Windows environments.
• Hands‑on experience with containerized applications using Docker and Kubernetes.
• Strong understanding of end‑to‑end CI/CD workflows, including build, automated testing, quality gates, deployment, rollback, release readiness, and integration with production delivery processes. Experience designing, implementing, or maintaining pipelines using GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI, or similar technologies is required.
• Experience building automation for performance, scalability, resiliency, or enterprise systems validation.
• Strong debugging and root cause analysis skills across software, infrastructure, networking, cloud services, and distributed applications.
• Demonstrated ability to lead technically complex initiatives, influence engineering decisions, and mentor other engineers through technical expertise.
• Ability to write clean, maintainable, production-quality code following software engineering best practices.
• Experience with public cloud platforms such as GCP, AWS, or Azure, with practical understanding of core cloud concepts such as compute, storage, networking, identity and access, monitoring, and troubleshooting.

Preferred

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code technologies such as Terraform or Ansible.
• Experience developing or testing cybersecurity, networking, identity, or enterprise infrastructure products.
• Experience with modern UI automation frameworks such as Playwright or Cypress.
• Experience with Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), X.509 certificates, SSL/TLS, certificate lifecycle management, Certificate Authorities, Machine Identity technologies, or adjacent security and identity concepts is highly valued. Candidates with strong systems, networking, or infrastructure depth and the ability to quickly learn the domain will also be considered.

Why Palo Alto Networks?

You’ll join a highly technical engineering organization responsible for building one of the industry's leading Machine Identity platforms.

Rather than writing individual test cases, you’ll build the automation frameworks, performance tooling, and enterprise validation infrastructure that enable engineering teams to confidently deliver secure, scalable, enterprise-grade software used by organizations around the world.

You’ll collaborate with engineers solving challenging problems across distributed systems, PKI, cloud-native infrastructure, networking, and cybersecurity while continuing to grow your technical expertise.

Work Arrangement

• Hybrid role based in Santa Clara, California

• Three days per week in the office

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-missioned 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.

$136,700.00 - $221,100.00/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? No. Please note that we will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.