{"id":3640417,"url":"https://alion.io/job/palo-alto-networks-distinguished-engineer-software-cortex-platform-2","title":"Distinguished Engineer Software (Cortex Platform)","company":{"id":13263,"name":"Palo Alto Networks","domain":"paloaltonetworks.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/paloaltontwks","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Workday","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":80,"open_postings":237,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.797,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":41,"computed_at":"2026-11-06T05:58:05Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":248700,"max":341250,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":341250},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":14,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Cortex","optional":false},{"name":"Cortex XSOAR","optional":false},{"name":"Go","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Rest API","optional":false},{"name":"ElasticSearch","optional":true},{"name":"Prometheus","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-02T21:29:54Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-02","last_verified_at":"2026-11-06T08:03:39Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":3,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":3},"description":"Our Mission\nAt 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.\nWho We Are\nIn 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!\nWe 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\nThe Team\nCortex Platform - Cortex is the industry's only open and integrated, AI-based, continuous security platform. Cortex is a significant evolution of the Application Framework designed to simplify security operations and considerably improve outcomes. Deployed on a global, scalable public cloud platform, Cortex allows security operations teams to speed the analysis of massive data sets.\nJob Summary\nAs a Distinguished Engineer for the Cortex Platform, you will serve as a key technical leader driving the innovation, development, and scaling of our industry-leading cybersecurity products, including Cortex Cloud, XSOAR, XDR, and XSIAM. You will architect shared infrastructures and tackle complex backend challenges to deliver exceptional value to thousands of enterprise customers. Leveraging AI-native architectures and cloud technologies, you will optimize data processing pipelines and distributed systems. This role requires a visionary approach and a passion for solving the world's most critical cybersecurity threats.\nKey Responsibilities\nDrive long-term technical vision and architecture for critical Cortex platforms and services.\nDesign highly scalable, secure, and cost-efficient distributed systems for processing massive data volumes.\nServe as a technical leader, providing consultation and collaborating across engineering teams to ensure alignment.\nLead cross-team architecture decisions, balancing scalability, performance, operational complexity, and engineering velocity.\nArchitect and optimize cloud-native infrastructure, data pipelines, distributed storage, and real-time analytics platforms.\nOwn and resolve complex technical challenges spanning multiple services, teams, and cybersecurity products.\nDrive adoption of AI-native architectures, agentic AI, and intelligent automation across engineering workflows.\nIdentify opportunities to apply AI to accelerate development, testing, troubleshooting, and overall operational efficiency.\nQualifications\nRequired Qualifications\nBachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.\n14+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a focus on distributed, cloud-native application development.\nExpert-level programming skills in Python, Go, with proven experience building large-scale distributed systems.\nStrong understanding of computer science fundamentals, including concurrency, networking, operating systems, databases, and storage systems.\nExtensive experience with cloud development, including REST APIs, databases, serverless computing, and microservices architectures.\nDemonstrated experience as a hands-on technical lead or architect on complex software projects.\nExperience architecting or implementing AI/ML-powered systems and familiarity with modern LLM-based technologies.\nExceptional technical judgment, communication, collaboration, and the ability to influence senior technical and business leaders.\nPreferred Qualifications\n8+ years of hands-on experience with specific cloud technologies such as ElasticSearch, Google Pub/Sub, or similar.\nDeep understanding of public cloud design considerations, including security, global network infrastructure, and load balancing.\nProven ability to make data-driven trade-off judgments and excellent troubleshooting skills to isolate and resolve complex issues.\nExperience working in an agile environment with cross-functional teams to deliver full-stack products at scale.\nFamiliarity with security operations, threat detection, cloud security posture management, and cyber security fundamentals.\nCompensation Disclosure\nThe 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.\n$248,700.00 - $341,250.00/yrOur Commitment\nWe’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.\nWe 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 .\nPalo 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.\nAll your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.\nIs role eligible for Immigration Sponsorship?: Yes","description_format":"text","description_chars":6418,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":14,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":true,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Restricted stock units"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Threat Intelligence","Endpoint Security","Information Security","Security Operations"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-02T21:29:54Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":63,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.632,"p_room":1,"age_days":3,"expected_fill_days":41,"reasons":["conf:3","stale_co","velocity","win:early","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-11-06T05:58:05Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":341250,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/palo-alto-networks-distinguished-engineer-software-cortex-platform-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/palo-alto-networks-distinguished-engineer-software-cortex-platform-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-06T09:26:54Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":17067,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-07T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":13263},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=13263"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fpalo-alto-networks-distinguished-engineer-software-cortex-platform-2"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fpalo-alto-networks-distinguished-engineer-software-cortex-platform-2"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fpalo-alto-networks-distinguished-engineer-software-cortex-platform-2"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/palo-alto-networks-distinguished-engineer-software-cortex-platform-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fpalo-alto-networks-distinguished-engineer-software-cortex-platform-2"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3640417}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"paloaltonetworks.com","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3640417},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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