Principal Escalations Engineer

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.

Job Summary Customer Engineering (CE) is an elite technical response team that sits at the high-stakes intersection of Product Engineering, Systems Reliability, and Technical Support. In this role, you are the technical pivot point of the organization, serving as a "strategic bridge" that translates complex field signals into learning for a self-improving AI support system and actionable engineering insights. You serve as the expert escalation point for an AI-driven support ecosystem. When complex, novel, or systemic issues arise, you step in to diagnose defects and drive resolution alongside AI tools. With every interaction, you translate complex troubleshooting logic into structured playbooks, guardrails, and deterministic tool calls that agents can execute, ensuring that every resolved issue elevates our automation and drives permanent product improvements. You operate as a code-aware escalation point for novel and systemic issues, driving root-cause isolation, product serviceability fixes, and the agentic AI capabilities that empower our wider support organization. We target curious, high-ownership Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) and top-tier escalation engineers with deep customer empathy who thrive when supporting high-stakes customer environments in crisis. On any given day, members of the team may work with cutting-edge hardware and software projects early in the product lifecycle, develop technical guidance, assist with challenging customer escalations, replicate complex issues in our lab, evaluate customer network designs, or shape features for supportability that define the future of our products.

Escalation Excellence & Customer Engagement: Drive top-tier technical escalations through deep technical analysis and defect diagnosis. Act as a calm, authoritative technical lead when supporting customers in crisis, collaborating with Engineering on hotfixes and representing engineering during critical executive communications. Product Quality & Serviceability: Identify product serviceability fixes and embed serviceability into early product design phases, working with QA teams to address test gaps. Agentic AI & Automation: Accelerate customer issue resolution by defining autonomous AI troubleshooting workflows, function-calling schemas, and guardrails integrated directly into customer co-pilots. Enablement: Author structured playbooks, guides, and tool definitions to empower first-level human support engineers and AI agents to resolve complex issues faster.

Qualifications & Mindset BS/MS or equivalent technical degree (Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field). 7+ years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), systems engineering,