Full-Time

Staff Data Scientist

Full Stack

Posted on 10/5/2025

Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks

10,001+ employees

Firewall and cloud security provider

No salary listed

Company Historically Provides H1B Sponsorship

Santa Clara, CA, USA

Hybrid

In-office role requiring 3 days on-site per week in Santa Clara HQ.

Category
Software Engineering (1)
Requirements
  • Seven plus years experience building and maintaining data pipelines for reporting, analysis and feature engineering.
  • Experience building and optimizing clean, well-structured analytical datasets for business and data science use cases, including implementing and supporting Big Data solutions for both batch (scheduled) and real-time (streaming) analytics.
  • Prior experience working extensively within dynamic cloud environments, specifically Google Cloud Services BigQuery and Vertex AI.
  • Prior experience developing dashboards in Tableau/Looker or similar data visualization platform.
  • Expert-level programming skills in Python and familiarity with core data science and machine learning libraries (e.g., Scikit-learn, Pandas, PyTorch/TensorFlow, XGBoost).
  • A solid command of SQL for complex querying and data manipulation.
  • Proven ability to work autonomously, navigate ambiguity, and drive projects from concept to completion.
Responsibilities
  • Design and implement scalable data architectures and datasets that support the organization's evolving data needs, providing the technical foundations for our analytics team and business users.
  • Support and implement large datasets in batch/real-time analytical solutions leveraging data transformation technologies.
  • Enable robust data-level security features and build scalable solutions to support dynamic cloud environments, including financial considerations.
  • Perform code reviews with peers and make recommendations on how to improve our end-to-end development processes.
  • Own the end-to-end lifecycle of machine learning projects, building and productionizing sophisticated models for critical business areas such as marketing attribution, customer churn prediction, case escalation and other relevant use-cases post-sales.
  • Optimize AI Agentic Systems: characterize, evaluate, and fine-tune AI agents—such as conversational systems that allow users to query massive datasets using natural language—to improve their accuracy, efficiency, and reliability.
  • Partner with Business Stakeholders: act as an internal consultant to our Go-to-Market, Global Customer Services and Product and Finance teams; translate business challenges into data science use-cases, identify opportunities for AI-driven solutions, and present findings in a clear, actionable manner.
  • Own the Full Data Science Lifecycle: understand the problem, chart a path to solve it, feature engineer, select and train models, perform robust evaluation, deployment, and ongoing monitoring for performance degradation in partnership with the data platform team.
Desired Qualifications
  • Nice to have: Experience implementing and managing data-level security features to ensure data is protected and access is properly controlled.
  • Prior working experience in Customer Analytics space and customer experience use-cases, e.g. Escalation, Risk predictors, Renewals and efficiency of project delivery in Professional Services space.
  • Direct experience with generative AI, including hands-on work with LLMs and frameworks like LangChain, LlamaIndex, or the Hugging Face ecosystem.
  • Experience in evaluating and optimizing the performance of AI systems or agents.
  • Demonstrated expertise in specialized modeling domains such as causal inference, time-series analysis.
  • An MS or PhD in a quantitative field like Computer Science, AI, Statistics, or equivalent practical experience or equivalent military experience.

Palo Alto Networks provides hardware, software, and subscription-based security solutions to protect organizations from cyber threats. Its products include network firewalls (Strata), cloud security (Prisma Cloud), and AI-powered security operations (Cortex), which work together to secure on-premises and cloud environments, manage identity and access, and detect threats. The company differentiates itself by offering an integrated, end-to-end security stack that combines hardware, software licenses, and ongoing services across enterprises, SMBs, and government clients. Its goal is to deliver comprehensive protection for networks, data, and applications as organizations move between data centers and cloud environments.

Company Size

10,001+

Company Stage

IPO

Headquarters

Santa Clara, California

Founded

2015

Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Q2 FY2026 revenue hit $2.594 billion with Next-Gen Security ARR up 33% YoY.
  • CEO Arora bought $10M shares March 27, 2026, lifting stock 5% to $154.35.
  • Portkey acquisition at $120M-$140M bolsters autonomous AI defenses in 2026.

What critics are saying

  • CrowdStrike Falcon erodes NGFW share with 40% faster endpoint detection in 12-24 months.
  • Zscaler captures 25% Prisma Access migrations via 30% cheaper SASE in 6-12 months.
  • CyberArk integration fails, causing Fortune 100 breach and 20-30% stock drop in 12-18 months.

What makes Palo Alto Networks unique

  • Prisma Cloud unifies proactive artifact scanning and reactive runtime protection across code to cloud.
  • Cortex Cloud integrates Prisma CNAPP with cloud detection for real-time threat response.
  • Prisma AIRS 3.0 discovers and protects agentic AI lifecycles launched April 2026.

Help us improve and share your feedback! Did you find this helpful?

Benefits

FLEXBenefits

Healthcare

Wellness

Development

Financial: Traditional & Roth 401(k) options

Time Off

Other Perks

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

-6%

1 year growth

-6%

2 year growth

-6%
Yahoo Finance
Apr 12th, 2026
Tech stocks 'on sale' as software sector drops 12% amid Iran ceasefire

Wall Street strategists are viewing recent tech stock volatility as a buying opportunity following a two-week Iran ceasefire. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF has fallen 12% over the past month, despite the S&P 500 rising slightly. Ben Emons of FedWatch noted "a bit of an overreaction", whilst Mark Gibbens of Gibbens Capital said it's "time to jump in". Strategists highlighted opportunities in Palantir Technologies, Palo Alto Networks, and Oracle, despite recent share price declines. Nvidia has dropped from recent highs to trade at 21 times forward earnings. Tiffany McGhee of Pivotal Advisors praised Oracle's cash flow and enterprise contracts, whilst Gradient Investments' Keith Gangl called Palo Alto a rare opportunity to buy quality "on sale". Strategists cautioned that volatility remains, but emphasised AI as a powerful catalyst.

Yahoo Finance
Apr 1st, 2026
Palo Alto Networks upgraded to Buy with $200 target on path to Rule of 60 profitability

Palo Alto Networks has received a Buy initiation from Benchmark with a $200 price target, based on the company's trajectory towards achieving Rule of 60 profitability status in FY2026 through 22–23% revenue growth and 37% adjusted free cash flow margin. The cybersecurity firm reported Q2 FY2026 revenue of $2.594 billion, beating estimates, with non-GAAP EPS of $1.03 surpassing the 93 cent estimate. Next-Generation Security ARR reached $6.30 billion, up 33% year-over-year. Despite the stock trading down 10.33% year-to-date and below its 200-day moving average, 44 analysts rate it Buy or Strong Buy with a consensus target of $206.97. However, investors should consider the elevated 42x forward P/E valuation and integration risks from pending acquisitions.

Yahoo Finance
Mar 31st, 2026
Morgan Stanley names top 5 cybersecurity stocks with up to 80% upside potential

Morgan Stanley identified five top cybersecurity stocks after attending the RSA Conference 2026: Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, SailPoint and SentinelOne. The firm believes these companies are well-positioned to benefit from growing AI security demand as businesses deploy AI agents. Microsoft has 1.6 million security customers and a $20 billion revenue run rate, with analyst Keith Weiss setting a $650 price target, implying 80% upside. Analyst Meta Marshall gave Palo Alto Networks a $223 target (50% upside), noting its broad AI portfolio and advantageous position despite a 20% year-to-date decline. CrowdStrike received a $510 target (38% upside) and was upgraded to a top pick based on its strong endpoint franchise and AI-driven security capabilities.

Yahoo Finance
Mar 31st, 2026
Palo Alto CEO buys $10M stake as shares jump 5%

Palo Alto Networks shares rose 5% on Monday to close at $154.35 following news that CEO Nikesh Arora purchased an additional stake worth $10 million in the company. According to a regulatory filing, Arora acquired 68,085 shares on 27 March at prices ranging from $146.87 to $147.48. The cybersecurity firm also unveiled Prisma AIRS 3.0, a new security platform designed to protect the entire agentic AI lifecycle. The product addresses security challenges in AI-powered enterprises by discovering AI agents across cloud environments, assessing risks continuously and providing real-time protection at scale. Palo Alto Networks said the platform enables enterprises to move beyond simply monitoring AI interactions to safely authorising autonomous execution, closing visibility gaps in AI operations.

Yahoo Finance
Mar 24th, 2026
Palo Alto Networks maintains buy rating despite target cut to $210 on cybersecurity demand

Palo Alto Networks has received a buy rating from Freedom Capital Markets, which reduced its price target from $230 to $210 whilst maintaining its recommendation. The cybersecurity firm reported strong second-quarter fiscal 2026 results, with earnings of $1.03 per share beating estimates of $0.94, and revenue of $2.6 billion exceeding expectations of $2.58 billion. Freedom Capital attributed the performance to growing demand for cybersecurity platform integration and successful acquisitions of CyberArk and Chronosphere. The company's third-quarter forecast also surpassed expectations, driven by merger and acquisition activity. The analyst raised revenue forecasts but lowered diluted non-GAAP earnings per share estimates, citing the transitional period of merger integration. Palo Alto Networks provides cybersecurity solutions including firewalls, malware protection and cloud security.

INACTIVE