Palo Alto Networks

Senior Staff Software Engineer — Layer 7 Security

$135K–$218K

Santa Clara, United States of America +2 · No · Senior Staff · Full-time · Posted Oct 16, 2026

Location: Santa Clara, United States of America
San Francisco, United States of America
San Jose, United States of America
Experience: 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant time in senior technical leadership roles.
Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science or related technical field, or equivalent practical/military experience.
Visa sponsorship: Will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.

About the job

Designs and leads development of high-performance, distributed Layer 7 cloud security systems that defend against evolving threats.

Define architecture and technical direction for scalable, reliable, secure systems and critical components.
Lead software delivery from design through deployment and sustainment, partnering across product, research, and platform teams.
Set engineering practices, solve complex debugging and performance challenges, and mentor engineers.

Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical/military experience.
7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant time in senior technical leadership roles.
Expert-level C and strong Go proficiency; extensive Unix/Linux development experience.
Experience building large-scale, high-performance distributed systems, with deep networking knowledge and advanced multi-threaded, multi-process, and multi-core system design.

Experience with cloud platforms, orchestration systems, and containerized deployments.
Expertise in TLS/SSL, cryptography, OpenSSL, HTTP protocols, backend services, or Python.

$134,600.00 - $217,800.00/yr (USD; base salary)

C, Go, Unix/Linux, TCP/IP, TLS/SSL, OpenSSL, HTTP, Python

Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative

First seen Oct 28, 2026 · Last verified Nov 5, 2026 (UTC)