Senior Staff, Software Automation / Test 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

Job Summary

We are seeking a hands-on Senior Staff Automation/Test Engineer to drive the end-to-end testing strategy for the Cortex Cloud platform. In this role, you will manually test and architect foundational automation frameworks from scratch, build internal testing tools as a service for our R&D teams, and ensure the quality of massive, multi-tenant cloud-native microservices.

Key Responsibilities

• Framework Architecture: Design, build, and scale resilient automation frameworks and testing tools from scratch.

• Test Strategy: Own the end-to-end test strategy (API, UI, integration, and Backend Stores) for complex distributed systems.

• CI/CD Integration: Embed automated test suites into modern CI/CD pipelines to ensure rapid, high-quality deployments.

• AI & Innovation: Leverage AI-assisted coding tools and next-gen workflows to optimize test generation and telemetry analysis.

• Collaboration & Mentorship: Partner with Dev, Product, Performance, and US teams to debug system regressions, and mentor engineers on Testing and Automation best practices.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Experience: 7 to 9 years of SDET experience, with a proven track record of manual testing and architecting automation frameworks at enterprise scale.

• Testing Expertise: Strong balance of advanced test automation architecture and robust manual/exploratory testing methodologies for validating complex workflows.

• Languages: Expert-level coding skills in Python

• Cloud & Containers: Strong experience with AWS/GCP/Azure, Kubernetes, and Docker.

• Distributed Systems: Experience testing event-driven architectures, microservices, and large-scale data pipelines (e.g., Kafka).

• Communication: Exceptional written and spoken communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical risks and strategy clearly to both engineers and leadership.

Preferred Qualifications

• Background in Cybersecurity or experience implementing AI/LLM-driven testing workflows.

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.