Principal Software Engineer - Wildfire

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 The Team Engineering - Our engineering team is at the core of our products and connected directly to the mission of preventing cyberattacks. We are constantly innovating — challenging the way we, and the industry, think about cybersecurity. Our engineers don’t shy away from building products to solve problems no one has pursued before. We define the industry instead of waiting for directions. We need individuals who feel comfortable in ambiguity, excited by the prospect of a challenge, and empowered by the unknown risks facing our everyday lives that are only enabled by a secure digital environment. Job Summary As a Principal Software Engineer on the WildFire team, you will architect the autonomous systems that power our global threat detection. You will design and build high-performance pipelines for automated verification and rapid release, ensuring our defenses evolve as fast as the threats themselves. Your mission is to transform complex security research into robust, scalable, and self-healing production infrastructure. This role is pivotal in tackling unprecedented problems and challenging conventional thinking in cybersecurity. Key Responsibilities Design and implement an autonomous pipeline for the continuous testing and verification of detection logic to ensure high-fidelity releases at an accelerated pace. Build and maintain high-performance, distributed systems that process millions of artifacts, transforming manual workflows into automated, self-healing production services. Define architectural standards for scalability, reliability, and extensibility, leading the transition from research prototypes to robust, hardened software products. Serve as the technical lead for integrating complex malware analysis engines into a global-scale cloud infrastructure with minimal latency and maximum uptime. Qualifications Required Qualifications BS/MS in Computer Science or a related field. 6 years of experience building large-scale distributed systems and high-throughput data pipelines. Proven expertise in building autonomous CI/CD pipelines and 'test-as-code' infrastructure. Proficiency in at least one of these languages: Golang, Python, or C. Deep hands-on experience with cloud-scale infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and managing 'Infrastructure as Code'. A track record of leading complex, cross-functional engineering initiatives and mentoring senior engineers in software craft and architectural best practices. Preferred Qualifications Experience integrating LLMs or AI agents into engineering workflows to automate root-cause analysis, generate test cases, or autonomously triage pipeline failures. Understanding of the security domain, including file-based threats, malware behavior, or the mechanics of de ... (truncated, view full listing at source)