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Principal Software Engineer - Cortex

Palo Alto Networks.com

140k - 230k USD/year

Office

Santa Clara, CA, United States

Full Time

Company Description

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks® everything starts and ends with our mission:

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.

Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. We

are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are

done, and we’re looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of

cybersecurity as we are.

Who We Are

We take our mission of protecting the digital way of life seriously. We are relentless in

protecting our customers and we believe that the unique ideas of every member of our

team contributes to our collective success. Our values were crowdsourced by

employees and are brought to life through each of us everyday - from disruptive

innovation and collaboration, to execution. From showing up for each other with

integrity to creating an environment where we all feel included.

As a member of our team, you will be shaping the future of cybersecurity. We work fast,

value ongoing learning, and we respect each employee as a unique individual. Knowing

we all have different needs, our development and personal wellbeing programs are

designed to give you choice in how you are supported. This includes our FLEXBenefits

wellbeing spending account with over 1,000 eligible items selected by employees, our

mental and financial health resources, and our personalized learning opportunities - just

to name a few!

Job Description

Your Career

We are looking for a Principal Backend Engineer to join our Cortex backend engineering

Group.

The group develops and maintains the backend of Cortex products - Cortex XSOAR,

Cortex XDR, and Cortex XSIAM. You will join a team focused on developing, innovating,

and scaling the Cortex Platform, along with contributing to shared Cortex

infrastructures and components. We are looking for candidates with a can-do attitude,

who are passionate about complex problems and thrive on bringing value to thousands

Of Customers.

Your Impact

End-to-end backend development of features and components across their entire

life cycle (design, develop, test, deploy, maintain)

Work closely with peers across different teams and disciplines to shape

solutions and integrate with other parts of the product

Contribute to team-wide efforts - code reviews, design reviews, technical and

Architectural Decisions

Production oriented approach with providing real time mitigation and solutions to

Production Issues

Qualifications

Your Experience

M.S/B.S degree in Computer Science or equivalent and 8+ years of software engineering experience, including development of a scalable server-side application

Extensive hands-on programming skills in Go and/or Python

Strong computer science fundamentals (e.g. understanding of lock-free data structures, bloom filters, minimal perfect hashing, consistent hashing etc)

Proven Experience with cloud platforms (e.g. GCP / AWS / Azure)

Experience with Microservices architecture (Kubernetes, GKE, EKS, AKS, Docker, Serverless, etc)

Experience with big–data architectures (using Kafka, Splunk, Flink, etc)

Experience with distributed computing (understand implications of CAP theorem, master election, brain split problem) and/or distributed DB/KVP (BigQuery, Elastic Search, Kafka and SingleStore)

Hands-on experience with SQL/NoSQL based databases

Experience working in an agile and dynamic environment High energy and the ability to work in a fast-paced environment with a can-do attitude

Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and cloud infra

Familiarity with Cyber Technologies, Information Security, and Software Security

Additional Information

The Team

[Input by recruiter and audited by recruiting specialist]

Compensation Disclosure

The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, experience, and work location. For candidates who receive an offer at the posted level, the starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/commissioned roles) is expected to be between $140000 - $230000/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.

  • Our Commitment
  • We’re problem solvers that 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  accommodations@paloaltonetworks.com.

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.

Principal Software Engineer - Cortex

Office

Santa Clara, CA, United States

Full Time

140k - 230k USD/year

September 29, 2025

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Palo Alto Networks

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