Palo Alto Networks

Sr Principal Engineer Software (AI Enablement & Strategy)

Palo Alto Networks$147K — $237K *
Enterprise Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 10+ years of software engineering experience in large distributed systems or platform architecture.
  • Proficient in at least one modern programming language (e.g., Python, Go, Java, C#, C++).
  • Hands-on experience with foundational LLMs and AI orchestration frameworks.
  • Experienced in navigating cloud environments (GCP, AWS, Azure) and security compliance challenges.
  • Exceptional communication and change-management skills; can influence leadership while being approachable for teams.

Responsibilities

  • Architect and implement self-service tooling for democratizing AI across the organization.
  • Rapidly prototype AI utilities to identify software or infrastructure roadblocks.
  • Drive consensus on AI architectures across cross-functional teams.
  • Design operational automation and frontier agents utilizing generative AI and knowledge graphs.
  • Simplify infrastructure to lower barriers for teams wanting to adopt AI.
  • Partner with InfoSec and Legal to solve governance and compliance challenges.
  • Set standards for AI-assisted development, balancing capabilities with costs and reliability.

Benefits

  • Flexible working arrangements with a dynamic office location.
  • A culture that fosters collaboration and innovation.
  • Access to cutting-edge technology and resources in AI security.
  • Opportunities for professional development and growth.
  • Supportive environment for balancing work-life commitments.
Full Job Description
Job Summary

The Team
The Prisma AIRS team is on a mission to solve the hardest problems in AI security with unmatched quality, making us the undisputed leader in this critical market segment. We are an AI-first organization that builds and deploys the core security platform, encompassing AI Supply Chain Security, AI Red Teaming, and AI Runtime Security. As we transition the platform architecture to support the processing of trillions of tokens monthly for high-throughput enterprise customers, our engineers are focused on driving massive scalability and continuous innovation. We hire for "Multipliers" who embrace collaboration and are dedicated to defining the future of AI defense.

Job Summary

As we rapidly accelerate our adoption of AI across the organization, we are looking for a highly skilled Senior Principal Engineer to lead our internal AI enablement and developer productivity strategy.

In this high-visibility role, you will treat AI enablement as a core Developer Experience and platform challenge. You are a "0-to-1" builder who translates complex ML research and broad business requirements into secure, scalable, self-service software. By treating our internal engineers as your primary customers, you will build the strategy, infrastructure, and agentic workflows that democratize AI across the company. You will champion a culture of practical application, ensuring our AI tools perform reliably in a demanding, real-world enterprise environment.

This role can be located at our dynamic downtown Seattle office in the office 3 days a week.

Key Responsibilities
  • Developer Experience & Self-Service Tooling: Democratize AI across the organization. Architect and implement the APIs, SDKs, and platform services that turn complex LLM capabilities and evaluation metrics into simple, self-service building blocks for our forward-deployed software engineers.
  • Hands-on Prototyping: Rapidly prototype lightweight AI-enabled utilities and assess whether roadblocks are software-related or infrastructure-related before scaling them for production.
  • Pragmatic Strategy & Technical Arbitration: Act as a trusted, neutral arbiter to drive consensus on AI architectures across cross-functional work streams. Drive a "leverage first, build second" roadmap-evaluating existing ecosystem capabilities while designing custom microservices only when necessary.
  • Agentic DevOps & Operational Automation: Push the boundaries of operational automation by designing frontier agents that utilize generative AI, RAG pipelines, and knowledge graphs to transform incident response, DevOps, and daily engineering tasks.
  • Removing Friction & Infrastructure Paved Roads: Lower the barrier to entry for teams looking to leverage AI. Package development environments, simplify initial setups, and eliminate the infrastructure friction that traditionally blocks rapid AI adoption.
  • Governance, Security & Compliance: Solve the complex IT and access challenges required to deploy AI in a highly regulated cybersecurity environment. Partner with InfoSec and Legal to establish robust authentication flows, strict data access patterns, and ethical AI guardrails.
  • Operational Excellence: Set the gold standard for AI-assisted development internally. Own technical decisions end-to-end, rigorously balancing cutting-edge AI capabilities with cloud infrastructure costs, latency requirements, and system reliability.


Qualifications

Preferred Qualifications
  • 10+ years of software engineering experience designing large distributed systems, platform architecture, or enterprise-grade internal developer portals.
  • Software First, AI Second: You are a seasoned distributed systems/software engineer who is fluent in AI. While you may not be building foundational models from scratch, you can interpret ML research code and assess whether a challenge is a software problem or an infrastructure limitation.
  • Expertise in at least one modern programming language such as Python (type hints, Pydantic, etc.), Go, Java, C#, or C++.
  • Deep, hands-on experience with foundational LLMs, vector databases, and AI orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, AutoGen), with a strong focus on taking prototypes into stable production.
  • 0-to-1 Builder: You are comfortable navigating ambiguous environments, defining technical strategy, and writing initial code before scaling it across a large engineering organization.
  • Demonstrated ability to solve complex security, compliance, and access-control challenges in cloud environments (GCP, AWS, Azure).
  • Exceptional communication and change-management skills; ability to influence executive leadership on ROI while serving as the approachable "go-to" AI expert for engineering teams.
  • BS or MS in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent professional/military experience.


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.

$147,000.00 - $237,500.00/yr

About Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks, Inc. is an American multinational cybersecurity company with headquarters in Santa Clara, California. Its core products are a platform that includes advanced firewalls and cloud-based offerings that extend those firewalls to cover other aspects of security. The company serves over 70,000 organizations in over 150 countries, including 85 of the Fortune 100. It is home to the Unit 42 threat research team and hosts the Ignite cybersecurity conference.
Learn more about Palo Alto Networks
Size
11,870 employees
Market Cap
$42.6 billion
Industry
Net Income
-$368.2 million
Founded
2005
5 Year Trend
+25.7%
Revenue
$3.7 billion
NASDAQ

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