Palo Alto Networks
Distinguished Engineer Software (Cortex Platform)
$249K–$341K
Office - USA - CA - Headquarters · No · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 15, 2026
- Experience
- Extensive experience as a senior hands-on engineer; no specific number of years stated.
- Visa sponsorship
- Immigration sponsorship: Yes
About the job
Serves as a hands-on technical leader for Cortex Cloud, architecting scalable systems and advancing AI-driven engineering practices across teams.
What you'll do
- Set technical direction, run experiments, and deliver critical-path code on high-profile projects.
- Build AI-driven systems and workflows to improve software development, testing, delivery, and engineering velocity.
- Coordinate cross-team initiatives, advise leadership, interview senior engineers, and mentor teams.
What they ask for
- Practical AI expertise with a track record of building AI systems and AI-driven engineering processes.
- Broad depth in architecture, distributed systems, cloud, and data, plus expertise in OS internals, networking, concurrency, storage, database internals, debugging, and performance profiling.
- Extensive senior hands-on engineering experience as a technical expert on complex, high-stakes systems.
- Strong communication, ownership, and experience interviewing senior engineers.
Nice to have
- Cybersecurity background.
- DevOps experience or equivalent infrastructure knowledge; hacker mindset.
Pay
USD 248,700.00 - 341,250.00 per year (base salary)
AI focus
Build AI-driven systems, AI-native workflows, and engineering processes that improve how software is built, tested, and shipped.
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