Senior Staff AI Software Engineer

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks® everything starts and ends with our mission:

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.
Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. We are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are done, and we’re looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of cybersecurity as we are.

Who We Are

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.

Your Career

We are seeking a Lead Applied AI Engineer to design, build, and operationalize advanced AI/ML and agentic systems that autonomously reason, act, and collaborate with users to complete complex tasks.

As a senior technical leader, you will drive key initiatives, shape modeling strategies, and work hands-on across data, statistical modeling, machine learning, LLMs, and broader GenAI/Agentic systems. You will partner closely with engineering, business, and research teams to deliver high-impact AI capabilities while guiding the organization’s long-term vision for agentic technologies.

Your Impact

• Lead the design and implementation of AI agents capable of planning, multi-step execution, self-correction, and collaboration with humans or other agents.

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

• Design , implement and integrate traditional AI/ML systems (eg data science/statistical models) into agentic workflows.

• Develop advanced reasoning pipelines, retrieval systems, and knowledge-graph integrations to enable autonomous task execution.

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

• Drive the full solution lifecycle—from prototype to production—ensuring scalability, reliability, safety, observability, and high performance across all AI/ML and agentic components.

• Partner with data engineering teams to design high-quality datasets, synthetic data pipelines, and continuous learning feedback loops.

• Mentor and guide data scientists and engineers, elevating data science and engineering standards across the organization.

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

Your Experience 

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

• 9+ years in data science, software engineering, data engineering, ML or Applied AI experience, including architecting large-scale distributed systems.

• Deep expertise in designing and deploying AI/ML systems, LLM-based applications and agentic systems 

• Hands-on experience with AI/ML, LLMs, RAG, agent frameworks and autonomous systems.

• Significant experience building production systems involving, ML, LLM inference, fine-tuning, orchestration Multi-step reasoning and planning, Tool/function calling etc. 

• Hands-on experience with frameworks like LangChain and LangGraph etc.

• Hands-on experience in building supervised, unsupervised and semi-supervised models/solutions.

• Strong proficiency in SQL to analyse structured data relational data bases.

• 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).

• Excellent communication skills and the ability to work with cross functional teams.

The Team

Working at a high-tech cybersecurity company within Information Technology is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You’ll join the brightest minds in technology, creating, building, and supporting tools and enabling our global teams on the front line of defense against cyberattacks.

We’re connected by one mission but driven by the impact of that mission and what it means to protect our way of life in the digital age. Join a dynamic and fast-paced team of people who feel excited by the prospect of a challenge and feel a thrill at resolving technical gaps that inhibit productivity.

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/commissioned roles) is expected to be between $0 - $0/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.

Our Commitment

We’re problem solvers that 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  [email protected].

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.