Senior Principal AI Researcher - AI Transformation

Our Mission

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.

Who We Are

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

Shape the future of AI-powered software engineering at Palo Alto Networks. As part of our AI Transformation group, you’ll join a multidisciplinary group building state-of-the-art, agentic AI systems that directly elevate the productivity of thousands of internal engineers.

We build internal AI infrastructure, frameworks, agents, harnesses, methodologies, and adoption programs powered by cutting-edge LLMs. Whether you are researching novel AI paradigms, architecting platform infrastructure, engineering end-to-end agentic tools, or driving developer enablement, your work will redefine how software at Palo Alto Networks gets built at scale.

This is an applied AI research role, where you will be inventing new technology, bringing the latest innovations into our agentic software development practices, and responsible for co-building systems that get deployed to our entire, global Cortex engineering organization. 

Key Responsibilities

• Stay at the forefront of AI advancements in agentic coding and integrate state-of-the-art techniques.

• Build functional Proof of Concepts (PoCs) and architectural skeletons to evaluate new AI techniques before scaling.

• Critically audit and challenge internal AI solutions, benchmarks, and architectures to prevent technological obsolescence.

• Design rigorous testing methodologies to assess model accuracy, latency, cost efficiency, and drift across solutions.

• Research and design advanced knowledge-retrieval architectures, including standard and graph-based RAG and hybrid contextual search.

• Collaborate with core AI engineering to transition validated prototypes into reusable components for our engineering workforce.

• Coordinate closely with the US Foundational AI Research team via flexible evening Israel / morning US meetings.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in Applied AI research, Data Science, or Machine Learning engineering.

• Deep, hands-on experience over the past 12+ months developing leading-edge agentic coding practices.

• Proficiency in Python and/or Typescript, with deep familiarity in Agentic AI orchestration libraries like LangChain, LlamaIndex, or LangGraph.

• Experience with automated statistical evaluation to track model drift, latency, costs, and hallucination rates.

• Hands-on experience developing advanced RAG pipelines, GraphRAG frameworks, and interacting with Graph Databases or vector indices.

• Practical experience with autonomous agent protocols, multi-agent communication layers, or Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Preferred Qualifications

• Understanding of secure data pipelines, including Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and prompt injection mitigation.

• Hands-on production experience utilizing Google Cloud Platform (GCP) services and infrastructure.

• Strong knowledge of data privacy and security considerations specific to AI and ML systems.

• Post-graduate work or equivalent advanced degree in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, or a related field.

Our Commitment

We’re trailblazers that dream big, take risks, and challenge cybersecurity’s status quo. It’s simple: we can’t accomplish our mission without diverse teams innovating, together.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all qualified individuals with a disability. If you require assistance or accommodation due to a disability or special need, please contact us at  [email protected].

Palo Alto Networks is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Is role eligible for Immigration Sponsorship? No. Please note that we will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.