Senior Staff Engineer Software, Palo Alto Networks
$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
- Full-Stack Mastery: Deep hands-on experience building enterprise-grade applications using the MEAN stack (MongoDB, Express.js, Angular, Node.js)
- Cloud Infrastructure Leadership: Proven track record architecting, deploying, and operating scalable solutions within the AWS ecosystem
- AI Tooling & Output Verification: Expertise in prompt and context engineering, utilizing AI tools within software development while exercising peer-review rigor to verify AI outputs for correctness and security
- Navigating Ambiguity: Demonstrated ability to remain highly productive through fluid requirements, adapting technical tactics while maintaining alignment with business goals
- System Design & Extensibility: Strong foundation in designing clean APIs, refactoring complex code bases, and making explicit architectural trade-offs for long-term scalability
- Production & Operational Ownership: Extensive experience debugging complex production services, driving RCAs, and implementing systemic prevention mechanisms
- Cross-Functional Influence: Skilled at aligning with PM, Design, and engineering partners, writing clear RFCs, and mentoring teams without needing formal authority
Desirable
- Identity & Access Security Domain: Direct experience with IAM, PAM, IGA, or Secrets Management platforms
- Modern Frontend & Quality Tooling: Fluency in TypeScript along with automated testing frameworks such as Jest, Playwright, or JMeter for load and stress testing
- DevOps & Observability Ecosystems: Practical experience with progressive delivery, CI/CD pipelines, feature flagging tools, and modern monitoring frameworks
- Context Engineering & Retrieval: Experience structuring codebase documentation and architecture for Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and reusable prompt templating
What the job involves
- We are seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer to advance the architectural evolution and technical direction of our platform
- In this role, you will tackle high-ambiguity technical challenges, set the engineering vision, and pioneer AI-first development workflows to accelerate feature delivery and elevate software quality
- You will take end-to-end ownership of critical system capabilities—designing for scale, optimizing cycle times, and establishing resilient security and operational patterns
- Drive End-to-End Feature Delivery: Take complete ownership of complex, end-to-end feature delivery by breaking down work, managing commitments, and systematically reducing cycle time and rework
- Lead AI-First Engineering Practices: Apply high AI tool fluency and prompt/context engineering to design AI-assisted workflows across the agentic SDLC. Rigorously evaluate AI-generated code to prevent hallucinations, security gaps, and logic defects
- Architect for Scale & Extensibility: Design clear system interfaces and extensible logic that minimize maintainer toil, gracefully handling performance, reliability, and scale trade-offs
- Practice Defensive & Secure Engineering: Enforce defensive coding practices across edge conditions, limits, and complex authorization paths to reduce defect escape rates
- Simplify Workflows & Enhance User Experience: Partner with PM and Design to translate product requirements into intuitive code, using prototypes and telemetry to simplify complex user flows and reduce friction
- Ensure Production Service Excellence: Act as a champion for service health by driving root cause analysis (RCA) on production incidents, reducing MTTR, and implementing durable fixes
- Foster Team Capability & Knowledge Sharing: Run technical experiments, share modern design patterns, document tribal knowledge, and author "RAG-ready" technical notes to onboard and uplevel engineering peers
- As a Senior Staff Software Engineer, you will serve as a primary pillar of our technical strategy and engineering culture
- By combining deep technical expertise with AI-first workflows, you will transform complex, ambiguous visions into secure, scalable, and highly performant platform capabilities
- Your impact will be measured not only by the durability and reliability of the software you ship, but also by the accelerated velocity and heightened capability of the engineering teams with which you collaborate
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. In 2025, the company surpassed $1.5B 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 market position.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
119% employee growth in 12 months
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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