Principal Machine Learning Engineer

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

The Team

The IT Automation & AI Engineering team builds modern, AI-first enterprise applications and automation platforms that support multiple business functions across the company. We focus on scalable architecture, strong engineering fundamentals, and practical application of AI to drive measurable business impact. In this role, you will establish technical direction, architectural standards, and reusable AI-first engineering patterns that extend across the broader engineering organization.

Your Career

The IT Engineering team builds AI-first enterprise systems that power critical business workflows across the company. This role will focus on advancing high-impact initiatives while shaping the architecture and engineering practices used across a broader portfolio of applications.

We operate at the intersection of full-stack application development, cloud-native services, enterprise data, and applied AI. The role requires deep software engineering expertise combined with the ability to design scalable systems, apply emerging AI capabilities responsibly, and translate complex business problems into durable technical solutions.

At the Sr Staff level, you will set technical direction across multiple complex initiatives, define architectural standards and reusable AI-first engineering patterns, and influence how teams across the organization design and build enterprise software. You will tackle the most ambiguous technical problems, remain hands-on where needed, and multiply your impact through architecture, technical leadership, and mentorship of senior engineers.

Your Impact

• Set architectural vision and technical direction for AI-first enterprise applications and platforms spanning multiple teams and business domains
• Lead the architecture and delivery of the most complex cross-team systems across full-stack applications, cloud-native services, enterprise data, and applied AI
• Establish reusable engineering standards, reference architectures, and shared capabilities for AI-first systems, including agentic workflows, RAG and retrieval, LLM evaluation, guardrails and AI security, and tool integration using technologies such as Vertex AI, LangChain/LangGraph, MCP, and A2A protocols
• Partner with senior business and technology leaders to translate ambiguous, high-impact problems into clear technical strategies and influence broader technical direction
• Drive AI-native engineering practices and modern development workflows, including effective use of tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, and similar platforms to improve engineering velocity and quality
• Mentor senior engineers and technical leaders, raise engineering standards, and multiply technical impact across the broader organization

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 10+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrated technical leadership across complex, production-scale systems
• Deep full-stack and distributed systems engineering experience
• Demonstrated experience setting architecture and technical direction across multiple services, applications, or engineering teams
• Production experience designing and building AI-integrated systems using LLMs, RAG, embeddings, tool/function calling, agentic workflows, or related architectures
• Experience designing production AI systems involving LLM orchestration, agents, retrieval, tool use, evaluation, and human-in-the-loop workflows
• Strong understanding of AI evaluation, guardrails, model and agent reliability, security, latency, cost, and production observability
• Strong understanding of APIs, enterprise data, system integration, cloud-native architecture, security, reliability, and production operations
• Experience deploying and scaling cloud-native applications and services
• Proven ability to translate ambiguous business problems into clear technical architectures and execution strategies
• Demonstrated ability to influence senior engineers, cross-functional stakeholders, and technical leadership
• Track record of establishing technical standards and multiplying impact beyond individual project ownership

Preferred Experience

• TypeScript, Node.js/NestJS, React, Python, and SQL
• Experience with RAG architectures, vector databases, embeddings, semantic search, retrieval, and context engineering
• Experience with LangChain/LangGraph, MCP, A2A protocols, tool integration, and production agentic architectures
• Experience establishing evaluation frameworks, LLM security controls, prompt injection defenses, and input/output validation
• Experience with applied machine learning or data science, including model development and evaluation, experimentation, statistical analysis, forecasting, classification, or other predictive techniques
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, event-driven systems, and modern cloud infrastructure
• Experience using AI-native development environments such as Cursor, Claude Code, Windsurf, or similar tools in professional engineering workflows
• Experience building reusable enterprise platforms, reference architectures, or shared technical capabilities adopted across multiple teams

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.