Palo Alto Networks
Principal Software Automation/Test Engineer
$156K–$253K
Office - USA - CA - Headquarters · No · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 29, 2026
- Experience
- 10+ years in software engineering, with at least 6 years focused on test automation, quality engineering, or developer productivity for large-scale distributed systems or SaaS.
- Education
- BS/MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
- Visa sponsorship
- Will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.
About the job
Leads test architecture and automation for Cortex Cloud, building scalable frameworks and validating distributed cloud services, integrations, and AI-driven features.
What you'll do
- Build test frameworks, integration environments, and CI/CD quality gates; lead system, scale, and chaos testing.
- Troubleshoot complex failures, perform root-cause analysis, and improve quality using metrics.
- Develop AI-powered testing tools and mentor engineers while influencing technical direction.
What they ask for
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, including at least 6 years in test automation, quality engineering, or developer productivity for large-scale distributed systems or SaaS.
- Strong programming skills in Python, Go, or Java; proven experience building and scaling test automation frameworks.
- Hands-on CI/CD experience; strong cloud, container, orchestration, and Infrastructure as Code knowledge.
- Extensive testing experience with microservices and data pipelines, enterprise cybersecurity domain expertise, and a BS/MS in Computer Science or Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
Nice to have
- Experience building AI agents or LLM-powered applications and applying AI/ML to engineering workflows or AI product validation.
- Experience with Playwright or Selenium, or security, resilience, or chaos engineering.
Pay
$156,400.00 - $253,000.00/yr USD base salary
Tools
Python, Go, Java, GitLab CI, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GCP, AWS
AI focus
Build AI agents and LLM-powered tools for test generation, failure triage, flaky-test detection, log analysis, and environment self-healing; define validation for AI-driven product features.
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative