Job SummaryAs a Principal Engineer in technical customer support, you will serve as the senior technical authority for your product specialization, shaping customer support, engineer development, and product serviceability. This hands-on role requires independent judgment to establish technical standards, lead systemic improvements, and resolve complex issues while maintaining a selective case workload.
Key Responsibilities- Maintain deep expertise in product architecture and deployments to establish cross-team investigation standards and identify emerging risks.
- Serve as the technical authority for complex engagements and New Product Introductions (NPI) by performing advanced diagnostics, such as packet/log analysis and lab reproductions.
- Guide investigation and mitigation strategies, supporting assigned engineers while preserving their ownership of the case and customer coordination.
- Communicate findings, risks, and recommendations clearly to technical teams, senior leadership, and customers.
- Own the technical quality of defect submissions, ensure JIRAs provide actionable evidence, and advocate with Engineering and PM for prioritized fixes based on business risk.
- Drive product serviceability by identifying gaps in diagnostics, tooling, and documentation, partnering with Engineering to implement and validate improvements.
- Drive and influence product KPIs, including time to resolution, time to engineering engagement, defect quality, playbook usage, and Copilot adoption.
- Mentor engineers across all levels by translating complex investigations into advanced training, technical workshops, and reusable troubleshooting guidance.
- Facilitate evidence-based, blameless postmortems for significant incidents to drive corrective actions to completion.
- Proactively lead cross-functional projects to improve support processes, aligning stakeholders and turning incident lessons into lasting organizational improvements.
- Provide support that includes mandatory weekend, holiday shift work and on-call support. Support includes a blend of as-needed and rotational coverage, which is subject to change.
Qualifications Required Qualifications- 10-15+ years of relevant experience in enterprise networking, security, or support, with a Bachelor's degree in a technical field or equivalent practical/military experience.
- Deep product specialization encompassing architecture, complex deployments, advanced troubleshooting, and failure analysis.
- Advanced hands-on diagnostic skills to resolve ambiguous problems, coupled with strong judgment in assessing customer impact and technical risk.
- A record of influencing Engineering, PM, and Support without reporting authority to drive technical initiatives and establish standards.
- Experience improving defect submission quality, product serviceability, and diagnostic practices across teams.
- Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers, facilitate postmortems, and lead process improvements from identification through validation.
- Clear communication skills suited for audiences ranging from hands-on engineers to customer executives.
Preferred Qualifications- Advanced certifications such as Palo Alto Networks Certified Network Security Architect, CCIE, or equivalent expert-level networking/security certifications.
- Aligned Palo Alto Networks product certifications, with equivalent demonstrated technical expertise also actively considered.
Compensation DisclosureThe 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.
$134,600.00 - $217,800.00/yr
