Senior Staff Software Engineer - AI-First Platform Lead

Palo Alto Networks, Inc.; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 126,000 - 205,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Restaurant options not specified

Job summary

Palo Alto Networks, Inc. is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to drive the architectural evolution and AI-first development workflows of our platform.

You will take end-to-end ownership of critical system capabilities, designing for scale, security, and high-quality delivery while shaping the engineering roadmap. You will lead end-to-end feature delivery, guide AI tooling within the SDLC, and collaborate with PM and Design to simplify complex user flows and reduce friction.

Qualifications

• Deep hands-on experience building enterprise-grade applications using the MEAN stack (MongoDB, Express.js, Angular, Node.js).
• Proven track record architecting, deploying, and operating scalable solutions within the AWS ecosystem.
• 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.
• Demonstrated ability to remain highly productive through fluid requirements, adapting technical tactics while maintaining alignment with business goals.
• Strong foundation in designing clean APIs, refactoring complex code bases, and making explicit architectural trade-offs for long-term scalability.
• Extensive experience debugging complex production services, driving RCAs, and implementing systemic prevention mechanisms.
• Skilled at aligning with PM, Design, and engineering partners, writing clear RFCs, and mentoring teams without needing formal authority.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Skills

MEAN stack

AWS architecture

AI tooling & verification

Navigating ambiguity

System design & extensibility

Production & operational ownership

Cross-functional influence

Tools

Jest

Playwright

CI/CD pipelines

Monitoring frameworks

Job description

Palo Alto Networks, Inc. is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to drive the architectural evolution and AI-first development workflows of our platform.

You will take end-to-end ownership of critical system capabilities, designing for scale, security, and high-quality delivery while shaping the engineering roadmap. You will lead end-to-end feature delivery, guide AI tooling within the SDLC, and collaborate with PM and Design to simplify complex user flows and reduce friction.