Senior Staff Engineer Software, Palo Alto Networks
Backend
$126-204.5k
More information about location
3 days a week in office
Leading cybersecurity protections and software platform
Be an early applicant
Leading cybersecurity protections and software platform
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$126-204.5k
More information about location
3 days a week in office
1001+ employees
Company mission
To be the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.
Role
Who you are
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
- 5+ years of professional software engineering experience building backend services and distributed systems
- Strong experience building backend services and APIs using Java OR Go
- Experience designing and operating distributed systems and microservices architectures
- Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP), ideally in SaaS environments
- Strong system design skills, including API design, scalability, reliability, performance optimization, and fault tolerance
- Experience building and operating production systems under real-world load, including concurrency, throughput, and distributed system challenges
- Experience building APIs, SDKs, or integrations consumed by internal and external customers
- Experience with messaging, event-driven systems, or streaming platforms such as Kafka
- Experience with CI/CD, containerization (Docker), and orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes
- Experience designing and building platform services, control planes, developer-facing APIs, or infrastructure-related software is highly desirable
- Familiarity with identity, authentication, authorization, certificate management, or security-related systems is a plus
- Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical projects and drive delivery across multiple stakeholders
- Experience mentoring engineers and contributing to technical decision-making within a team or domain
- Strong problem-solving, communication, and collaboration skills
- Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, highly collaborative engineering environment and work in a hybrid capacity 3 days a week from HQ in Santa Clara, CA
What the job involves
- We are seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to join our Machine Identity Security team, focused on backend systems that power the control plane of our platform
- In this role, you will design, build, and evolve scalable backend services, APIs, and integrations that enable secure machine identity and certificate lifecycle management at scale
- You will work on high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems supporting large-scale request volumes and real-time system interactions
- You will play a key role in developing control plane capabilities that support machine identity lifecycle management across cloud, hybrid, and enterprise environments
- This includes building APIs, service-to-service interactions, integrations, and backend systems that are secure, reliable, and scalable
- As a Senior Staff Engineer, you will serve as a technical leader within the team, owning critical backend services and platform capabilities
- You will drive the design and delivery of complex technical initiatives, contribute to architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and partner cross-functionally to build scalable and secure machine identity solutions
- Design, develop, and maintain backend services and APIs that power the Machine Identity Security control plane
- Lead the technical design and implementation of scalable, reliable, and extensible backend systems
- Own the architecture and technical execution of key backend services and platform capabilities from design through production operation
- Build and maintain integrations between the control plane and external systems and tools (e.g., Terraform, Ansible, enterprise platforms)
- Design and operate distributed systems supporting large-scale, multi-tenant SaaS environments
- Optimize backend services for performance, scalability, reliability, observability, and operational efficiency
- Partner closely with frontend, platform, product, and security teams to design APIs and service interfaces that support machine identity workflows
- Drive engineering best practices around service design, API development, testing, observability, resiliency, and operational excellence
- Troubleshoot and resolve complex production issues across distributed systems and services
- Lead complex technical initiatives within your domain and contribute to architecture discussions across related services and components
- Provide technical leadership through design reviews, code reviews, mentoring, and collaboration with engineers across the team
- Drive operational excellence through monitoring, performance tuning, reliability improvements, and incident response
- Contribute to improvements in development workflows, CI/CD pipelines, testing practices, and engineering standards
- Help evolve engineering practices that incorporate modern development tooling responsibly, with attention to security, correctness, and maintainability
Our take
With cyber threats evolving at lightening speed, businesses need robust solutions to protect their data and infrastructure. And the global cybersecurity market is projected to grow significantly, driven by increasing cyberattacks and the adoption of digital transformation initiatives. Because of this, companies are seeking security platforms that can address these challenges efficiently.
That's where Palo Alto Networks steps in, a frontrunner in the cybersecurity arena. It offers a suite of AI-powered security solutions designed to safeguard enterprises across various sectors. Its platforms, such as Cortex XSIAM and Prisma AIRS, integrate advanced threat detection, zero trust architecture, and real-time response capabilities so organizations are ready to manage and mitigate risks.
Its leadership is evident too, with impressive growth and strategic partnerships. Recently the company surpassed $1.5M in sales through the Google Cloud Marketplace, highlighting the demand for its innovative security solutions. Additionally, a collaboration with AT&T aims to enhance cybersecurity offerings, further solidifying its position in the market.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (2 rounds)
Sep 2022
$34m
SERIES A
May 2022
$11m
SEED
Total funding: $45m
Company benefits
- Healthcare: We value your health and provide options so you can choose what best supports your lifestyle and personal health goals. Various nationwide plans — including Blue Shield of California, Kaiser Permanente, Delta Dental, VSP, and more — are available to you and your family. Our providers offer the flexibility you want and the coverage you need
- Wellness: With a large on-site gym and daily, instructor-led exercise classes at HQ in Santa Clara, Palo Alto Networks actively supports employee fitness. Our juice bar, Gym & Juice, features fresh juice blends, a quick and nutritious option pre- or post-workout. And our ongoing wellness speaker series highlights the latest trends in health and wellness
- Development: Professional development is serious business at Palo Alto Networks, where the Talent Development team offers 25+ courses to help employees boost their careers and develop leadership capability
- Financial: Most roles are eligible for equity grants, and we now offer new hires a quarterly vesting schedule right away. We want you to be fairly compensated and rewarded as soon as you make an impact – on our team, that happens immediately! And because we consider every employee a stakeholder in our long-term success, we offer an Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) with a 24-month lookback. From life insurance to health savings accounts, we provide ways to help you protect and grow your wealth. Palo Alto Networks offers both traditional and Roth 401(k) options, along with a company match of 50% to a max annual amount of $1,000
- Time Off: In addition to paid corporate holidays, Flexible Time Off programs empower our employees to balance their work schedules with personal time off. We offer 12 weeks of full pay for medical leave and 6 weeks of full pay for parental leave. As a company with strong ties to the military and veterans, we also offer 26 weeks of full pay for military leave
- Perks: Our corporate discount program provides employees with significant discounts on merchandise, travel and entertainment. We offer many on-site perks at headquarters, including cafeterias, fuel service, dry cleaning service, EV charging stations, and a company store. We also provide complimentary drinks, fresh fruit, and snacks in break rooms across our campus to help everyone power through the day. Life at Palo Alto Network
Company HQ
Santa Clara, CA
Leadership
Nikesh Arora
(CEO & Chairman)Previously the President and COO at SoftBank, CBO at Google, and CMO at T-Mobile.
Nir Zuk
(Founder & CTO)Previously CTO at NetScreen Technologies, which was acquired by Juniper Neworks in 2004. They also co-founded OneSecure where they served as CTO and was the Principal Engineer at Check Point Software Technologies.
Lee Klarich
(CPO)Initially joined Palo Alto in 2006 as the EVP of Product Management and became CPO in 2018. Prior to this, they were the Director of Product Management at Juniper Networks and a Product Line Manager at NetScreen Technologies.
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