Senior Staff Engineer Software

Palo Alto Networks; Needham (MA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare

Wellness

Development

Equity & ESPP

Time Off

Perks

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer in Needham, MA to drive architectural evolution, define the technical direction, and lead AI-first workflows across the platform. You will own critical system capabilities, design for scale, and ensure secure, high-quality delivery through the engineering lifecycle.

You will coach teams, tackle ambiguous problems, and partner with PM/Design to translate requirements into robust, scalable implementations.

Qualifications

• Own architectural evolution and technical direction of the platform.
• Tackle high-ambiguity technical challenges and AI-first workflows.
• End-to-end ownership of critical system capabilities.
• Design for scale, security, and reliability.

Responsibilities

• Drive End-to-End Feature Delivery by breaking down work and reducing cycle time.
• Lead AI-First Engineering Practices across the SDLC.
• Architect for Scale & Extensibility with clear interfaces.
• Enforce Defensive & Secure Engineering across complex paths.
• Champion service health with RCA and durable fixes.
• Foster knowledge sharing and onboard peers.
• Collaborate with PM and Design to translate product requirements into intuitive code.
• Set engineering vision and accelerate feature delivery.

Skills

AI-first engineering

System design

Security engineering

End-to-end delivery

Mentoring

Tools

MEAN stack

AWS

CI/CD

Observability

Job description

• We are seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to advance the architectural evolution and technical direction of our platform
• In this role, you will tackle high-ambiguity technical challenges, set the engineering vision, and pioneer AI-first development workflows to accelerate feature delivery and elevate software quality
• You will take end-to-end ownership of critical system capabilities—designing for scale, optimizing cycle times, and establishing resilient security and operational patterns
• Drive End-to-End Feature Delivery: Take complete ownership of complex, end-to-end feature delivery by breaking down work, managing commitments, and systematically reducing cycle time and rework
• Lead AI-First Engineering Practices: Apply high AI tool fluency and prompt/context engineering to design AI-assisted workflows across the agentic SDLC. Rigorously evaluate AI-generated code to prevent hallucinations, security gaps, and logic defects
• Architect for Scale & Extensibility: Design clear system interfaces and extensible logic that minimize maintainer toil, gracefully handling performance, reliability, and scale trade-offs
• Practice Defensive & Secure Engineering: Enforce defensive coding practices across edge conditions, limits, and complex authorization paths to reduce defect escape rates
• Simplify Workflows & Enhance User Experience: Partner with PM and Design to translate product requirements into intuitive code, using prototypes and telemetry to simplify complex user flows and reduce friction
• Ensure Production Service Excellence: Act as a champion for service health by driving root cause analysis (RCA) on production incidents, reducing MTTR, and implementing durable fixes
• Foster Team Capability & Knowledge Sharing: Run technical experiments, share modern design patterns, document tribal knowledge, and author “RAG-ready” technical notes to onboard and uplevel engineering peers
• As a Senior Staff Software Engineer, you will serve as a primary pillar of our technical strategy and engineering culture
• By combining deep technical expertise with AI-first workflows, you will transform complex, ambiguous visions into secure, scalable, and highly performant platform capabilities
• Your impact will be measured not only by the durability and reliability of the software you ship, but also by the accelerated velocity and heightened capability of the engineering teams with which you collaborate

Benefits

• Healthcare: We value your health and provide options so you can choose what best supports your lifestyle and personal health goals. Various nationwide plans — including Blue Shield of California, Kaiser Permanente, Delta Dental, VSP, and more — are available to you and your family. Our providers offer the flexibility you want and the coverage you need
• Wellness: With a large on-site gym and daily, instructor-led exercise classes at HQ in Santa Clara, Palo Alto Networks actively supports employee fitness. Our juice bar, Gym & Juice, features fresh juice blends, a quick and nutritious option pre- or post-workout. And our ongoing wellness speaker series highlights the latest trends in health and wellness
• Development: Professional development is serious business at Palo Alto Networks, where the Talent Development team offers 25+ courses to help employees boost their careers and develop leadership capability
• Financial: Most roles are eligible for equity grants, and we now offer new hires a quarterly vesting schedule right away. We want you to be fairly compensated and rewarded as soon as you make an impact – on our team, that happens immediately! And because we consider every employee a stakeholder in our long‑term success, we offer an Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) with a 24‑month lookback. From life insurance to health savings accounts, we provide ways to help you protect and grow your wealth. Palo Alto Networks offers both traditional and Roth 401(k) options, along with a company match of 50% to a max annual amount of $1,000
• Time Off: In addition to paid corporate holidays, Flexible Time Off programs empower our employees to balance their work schedules with personal time off. We offer 12 weeks of full pay for medical leave and 6 weeks of full pay for parental leave. As a company with strong ties to the military and veterans, we also offer 26 weeks of full pay for military leave
• Perks: Our corporate discount program provides employees with significant discounts on merchandise, travel and entertainment. We offer many on‑site perks at headquarters, including cafeterias, fuel service, dry cleaning service, EV charging stations, and a company store. We also provide complimentary drinks, fresh fruit, and snacks in break rooms across our campus to help everyone power through the day.

Life at Palo Alto Network

Cross-Functional Influence: Skilled at aligning with PM, Design, and engineering partners, writing clear RFCs, and mentoring teams without needing formal authority

Full-Stack Mastery: Deep hands‑on experience building enterprise‑grade applications using the MEAN stack (MongoDB, Express.js, Angular, Node.js)

Production & Operational Ownership: Extensive experience debugging complex production services, driving RCAs, and implementing systemic prevention mechanisms

AI Tooling & Output Verification: Expertise in prompt and context engineering, utilizing AI tools within software development while exercising peer‑review rigor to verify AI outputs for correctness and security

Navigating Ambiguity: Demonstrated ability to remain highly productive through fluid requirements, adapting technical tactics while maintaining alignment with business goals

System Design & Extensibility: Strong foundation in designing clean APIs, refactoring complex code bases, and making explicit architectural trade‑offs for long‑term scalability

Cloud Infrastructure Leadership: Proven track record architecting, deploying, and operating scalable solutions within the AWS ecosystem

Context Engineering & Retrieval: Experience structuring codebase documentation and architecture for Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) and reusable prompt templating

DevOps & Observability Ecosystems: Practical experience with progressive delivery, CI/CD pipelines, feature flagging tools, and modern monitoring frameworks

Modern Frontend & Quality Tooling: Fluency in TypeScript along with automated testing frameworks such as Jest, Playwright, or JMeter for load and stress testing

Identity & Access Security Domain: Direct experience with IAM, PAM, IGA, or Secrets Management platforms