Senior Staff Software Engineer - Secure Agentic AI

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

We’re building foundational infrastructure to secure AI agents - including their identities, access patterns, and interactions with sensitive systems and data. This includes designing intelligent, dynamic mechanisms for ephemeral access control, secrets management, and agent/user identity tailored to the modern agent ecosystem.

You’ll help define how agents (both machine and human-facing) authenticate, obtain scoped access, perform actions securely, and leave a verifiable audit trail.

This is a unique opportunity to be part of a start-up inside the company - building the platform from scratch at one of the most cutting-edge intersections of AI, identity, and security.

Responsibilities:

• Own the design and development of secure, scalable services that enable AI agents to manage their identities, secrets, and access - directly protecting critical systems and data.
• Take charge of agent authentication flows and real-time access policies, ensuring seamless, reliable just-in-time, least-privilege access.
• Lead the evolution of MCPs and agentic AI, transforming innovative ideas into systems that define how intelligent agents operate at scale.
• Collaborate with architects and engineers to shape and deliver high-performance platform components you can take pride in.
• Write clean, maintainable, and scalable code that powers some of the world’s largest and most security-conscious companies.
• Drive cross-functional efforts with platform, AI, and security teams to gather requirements, influence design decisions, and bring impactful solutions to life.

Qualifications

• You bring 5+ years of experience in backend or systems development. Experience with Python or Go is an advantage.
• You’ve built distributed, cloud-based systems that are scalable, secure, and high-performing, and you’re comfortable working with AWS, GCP, or Azure.
• You’re naturally curious and passionate about exploring new technologies and tools, especially in AI and agentic AI, and you love turning emerging ideas into real systems.
• You’re proactive, take ownership of your work, and constantly strive for excellence and improvement in everything you do.
• You communicate and collaborate effectively, enjoying close partnerships with multiple engineering teams to design and deliver complete, secure solutions.

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.