Senior Staff Software Engineer (Internet Security)

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

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks® everything starts and ends with our mission: protecting our way of life in the digital age by preventing successful cyberattacks. It’s not a small goal. It isn’t simple either, but we aren’t in this for the easy answer.

As a company with a foundation in challenging the way things are done, we’re looking for innovators with a dedication to best. In return, your career will have a tangible impact – one that's working towards technology that affects every level of society.

Our mission doesn’t happen by treading softly – no, it happens by defining an industry. It means building products that haven't been thought of. It means selling products with a solutions mindset. It means supporting the infrastructure of a company that moves at an incredible speed – intentionally – to stay ahead of the world’s next cyberthreat.

Your Career and The Team

 As a member of the Advanced URL Filtering (Internet Security) Infrastructure and Platform Team, you will work closely with data scientists, security researchers, and other engineers on implementing different projects to detect and defend against various emerging threats in the areas of Web Security. You will build big data and distributed systems that use machine learning and deep learning models to analyze and categorize an enormous amount of URLs. You will be a key person in transforming ideas into products that are part of the next-generation security platform. The Internet Security Research Team is responsible for innovating new security techniques.

Your Role

• Build and maintain threat research systems for both customer-facing products and internal infrastructures.

• Work closely with team members and Product Managers to collect product requirements, create design drafts, and develop functional specifications.

• Implement solutions by adhering to software development guidelines and best practices.

• Work with SREs on production release/deployment and monitoring.

 

Qualifications

Your Experience

•  BS/MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

• BS with 3+ years of industry backend experience.

•  Strong programming skills in Go or Java, with working proficiency in Python.

•  Experience designing, building, and operating backend services and data pipelines on distributed systems — including the regression and integration testing that keeps them reliable in production.

•  Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud platform (GCP, AWS,or Azure) and container-based development with Docker and Kubernetes.

• Practical experience with CI/CD, performance tuning, and scaling systems as traffic and data volume grow.

• Comfortable working in Linux — shell scripting, debugging, and profiling on real systems.

• Production experience with a database such as MongoDB, MySQL, or similar, including schema and index design and query optimization.

• Big data and ETL experience with Spark or comparable batch/streaming frameworks is a plus.

• Have basic knowledge of Machine Learning and Web Content Classification. 

• Familiarity with web development technologies — JavaScript or TypeScript is a plus.

• Effective use of AI coding tools, and experience building agent-based workflows.

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/com-missioned roles) is expected to be the annual range listed below. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.

$126,000.00 - $204,500.00/yr

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  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.

Is role eligible for Immigration Sponsorship? No. Please note that we will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.