Senior Staff Engineer – Real-Time Layer 7 Security

Palo Alto Networks, Inc.; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 160,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks, Inc. in Santa Clara, CA, is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer for the Layer 7 security team. You will design architecture, influence product direction, and lead the development of security technologies addressing evolving threats.

The role requires deep systems programming, networking, and distributed systems expertise, with a track record of delivering high-performance, production-grade software and mentoring other engineers.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science or related technical field, or equivalent practical/military experience.
• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant time in senior technical leadership roles.
• Expert-level proficiency in C and strong proficiency in Go.
• Extensive experience developing in Unix/Linux environments.
• Proven experience designing and building large-scale, high-performance distributed systems.
• Deep expertise in networking fundamentals, including TCP/IP internals and network security technologies.
• Advanced experience with multi-threaded, multi-process, and multi-core system design.
• Strong foundation in data structures, algorithms, and systems-level performance optimization.

Responsibilities

• Drive the development of highly scalable, real-time, distributed cloud security systems
• Define and implement robust, high-performance, and maintainable system architectures
• Set technical direction for critical components, ensuring scalability, reliability, and security
• Partner with product management, security research, and platform teams to translate complex requirements into executable designs
• Lead end-to-end execution across the software development lifecycle, from concept through deployment and sustainment
• Establish and enforce engineering best practices, including code quality, performance optimization, and secure development
• Mentor senior and junior engineers, and elevate the technical capabilities of the organization
• Identify architectural, tooling, and process gaps and drive improvements at an organizational level
• Serve as a technical authority for debugging, performance tuning, and complex system challenges

Skills

C

Go

Unix/Linux

Distributed systems

Networking

Multithreading

Data structures

Algorithms

System design

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science or related field

Job description

Palo Alto Networks, Inc. in Santa Clara, CA, is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer for the Layer 7 security team. You will design architecture, influence product direction, and lead the development of security technologies addressing evolving threats.

The role requires deep systems programming, networking, and distributed systems expertise, with a track record of delivering high-performance, production-grade software and mentoring other engineers.