Principal AI Software Engineer

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

As a Technical Leader developing AI applications in the GTM/CX domain, you will define the architectural blueprint for scalable AI/ML and agentic systems that transform our sales and customer experience motion. The Sr. Principal/Principal person will have demonstrated experience in understanding Sales Domain, Partner or Channel Sales, GTM, and services business processes and operations workflows.

Experience with Salesforce

Establish standards for safety, guardrails, reliability, observability and performance across all AI/ML/Agentic components.
Lead design and implementation of ML/LLM/GenAI-powered agents capable of
planning, multi-step execution, self-correction, and collaboration with humans or other agents.

Drive end-to-end solution development from prototype to production, ensuring
scalability, reliability, safety, observability, and performance.

Build, fine-tune, or adapt LLMs, multimodal models, and specialized agent models.

Build, evaluate, and integrate traditional AI/ML/Statistical models into agentic
workflows.

Develop advanced reasoning pipelines, retrieval systems, and knowledge graphs
integrations that support autonomous task execution.

Ensure production readiness through robust testing, evaluation frameworks, and real-world performance validation.

Partner with data engineering to design high-quality datasets and synthetic data pipelines and feedback loops for continual learning.

Mentor and guide data scientists and engineers, elevate data science and engineering practices across the organization.

Communicate complex technical decisions and trade-offs to executives and cross-functional stakeholders.

Qualifications

Masters/PhD in Computer Science, AI, Data Science or related field.

15+ years in data science, software engineering, data engineering, ML or Applied AI experience, including architecting large-scale distributed systems and working on Salesforce.

Proven experience designing and deploying production ML, LLM-powered applications, including agentic systems.

Deep expertise in developing conversational agents and advanced intelligent

multi-agent automation systems

Demonstrated experience with orchestration frameworks like LangChain, LangGraph etc.

Up-to-date with LLM evolution like GPT, Anthropic, Llama models etc.

Demonstrated ability to lead high-ambiguity cross-team technical initiatives.

Hands-on experience in building supervised, unsupervised, and semi-supervised

models/solutions.

Strong proficiency in SQL to analyse structured relational databases.

Strong proficiency in at least one core language (Python, Go, Java, or equivalent).

Strong knowledge of distributed systems, microservice architecture, and cloud

platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP).

Preferred:

Excellent communication skills and the ability to influence at all levels

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.

$167,000.00 - $270,500.00/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?: Yes