Principal Software Engineer (Cloud Platform and AI Engineering)

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.

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.

Your Career Our ATP Cloud team is at the forefront of integrating AI into cybersecurity infrastructure — building intelligent systems that fundamentally change how we detect, respond to, and resolve incidents at scale. As a Principal Software Engineer, you will own the technical vision for our AI-powered platform, shaping how agentic workflows and LLM-driven automation are built into the backbone of our cloud services on GCP. This is a high-impact role where your decisions will directly influence product direction and team growth.

Own the architecture and technical roadmap for AI agentic workflows that automate complex operational and engineering challenges Design and scale backend systems on GCP that seamlessly integrate AI capabilities into production services Drive the adoption of GCP-native AI tools (Vertex AI Agent Builder, Google ADK) and define how our team builds and ships AI agents Partner with product managers, cybersecurity researchers, and AI application teams to translate business problems into AI-driven solutions Set the engineering bar for the team — establish best practices for building, testing, and operating AI-augmented services in production Influence technical direction across the organization and mentor engineers to grow their cloud and AI expertise Qualifications Your Experience BS/MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent military experience required 8+ years of experience working on large cloud infrastructure platforms Strong proficiency in Python and/or GoLang Hands-on experience building AI agents or agentic workflows (e.g., using Google ADK, Vertex AI Agent Builder, or custom agent frameworks) Experience with MCP (Model Context Protocol) or similar agent-tool integration patterns Practical experience working with LLMs, prompt engineering, and integrating AI models into backend services Experience building semantic layers, KV caching, or similar techniques to optimize LLM performance and reduce inference cost Solid skills in multi-threaded and multi-process programming and experience in distributed systems Strong microservice development experience Rich GCP experience and its suite of managed services (Vertex AI, Pub/Sub, GKE, Cloud Run, Secret Manager) Solid knowledge and skills in Linux, Kubernetes, and Docker Solid knowledge of web servers/proxies such as NGINX, Envoy Comprehensive experience with SQL and NoSQL technologies such as MySQL, Redis, BigQuery Hands-on experience with messaging/queuing systems such as Pub/Sub or Kafka Solid understanding of system design, scalability, optimization, and performance metrics Exceptional problem-solving skills and the ability to work in a fast-paced environment Teamwork, problem-solving, and a can-do attitude