Principal Software Automation/Test Engineer

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

Your Career
At Palo Alto Networks, we're not just building products — we're redefining what's possible in cybersecurity. As a Principal Software Automation/Test Engineer, you'll play a critical role in our mission to secure the world’s digital transformation. Your work will directly impact the quality and reliability of the solutions that protect global enterprises every day. If you're passionate about driving quality at scale and want to be part of a team that's leading the charge in cloud security innovation, we want to hear from you.

• Why Cortex Cloud?

  • Market Leader – Be part of the fastest-growing cloud security platform, trusted by leading organizations around the globe — and help ensure its quality scales with its success.

  • Innovative Culture – Collaborate with top minds in cybersecurity and automation, where your ideas for smarter, faster, and more secure testing will be valued and implemented.

  • Massive Impact – Your work will directly contribute to protecting the world’s most critical digital assets — by ensuring our solutions are secure, stable, and production-ready.

  • Rapid Growth – Join a high-velocity team where career growth and impact go hand in hand. As we scale, you'll have opportunities to take ownership, lead initiatives, and grow your technical expertise.

Your Impact

1. Integrated Tools Strategy & AI Innovation

• Architect Next-Gen Platforms: Lead the design of tooling platforms and comprehensive strategies for complex, large-scale systems.

• Drive AI-Powered Automation: Leverage AI to design intelligent tools that enhance testing efficiency, code quality, and productivity across the organization.

• Build Agentic Workflows: Integrate LLM-powered assistants and agentic workflows to automate repetitive tasks like test case creation, log analysis, and code review triage.

• Operationalize Emerging Tech: Evaluate and adopt technologies such as Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and fine-tuned models to push the boundaries of engineering automation.

• Establish AI Guardrails: Define best practices for responsible AI usage, including hallucination mitigation and human-in-the-loop review processes.

2. Engineering Productivity & Infrastructure

• Enhance Developer Experience: Design and implement internal tools, SDKs, and frameworks to boost engineering velocity and productivity.

• Advanced Framework Development: Build robust automation frameworks equipped with detailed reporting, observability, and seamless CI/CD integration.

• Cloud-Native Environments: Manage complex testbeds and infrastructure-as-code solutions to support varied development and testing scenarios.

• Predictive Analytics: Develop AI-driven defect prediction and root cause analysis tools to accelerate the QA lifecycle.

3. Technical Leadership & Mentorship

• Influence Strategy: Provide insights into engineering efficiency and tooling gaps to influence the development of cutting-edge solutions.

• Systemic Problem Solving: Guide root cause analysis of complex tooling failures and infrastructure incidents during and after releases.

• Lead by Example: Mentor junior and mid-level engineers, fostering a culture of ownership and engineering excellence.

• Build the Team: Actively participate in the hiring process and technical interviews to help build a world-class tools engineering organization.

Qualifications

• Professional Background: 9+ years in software tooling or infrastructure engineering within large-scale enterprises or high-growth startups.

• Technical Proficiency: Strong programming skills in Python.

• AI/ML Expertise: Proven experience leveraging AI/ML technologies (LLMs, agentic frameworks, prompt engineering) to build intelligent engineering tools.

• Cloud Mastery: Deep understanding of public cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and building tools that leverage cloud-native services.

• Architecture & Tooling: Demonstrated experience designing complex tooling frameworks from scratch with a focus on scalability and extensibility.

• Modern Toolchain: Proficiency in integrating technologies such as Pytest, Selenium, Playwright, Terraform, Docker, and Kubernetes.

• Systems Thinking: Strong troubleshooting skills and experience supporting tooling for distributed systems and SaaS-based products.

• Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.

• Industry Knowledge: Experience in cloud security or an equivalent relevant domain is advantageous.

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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

Our Commitment

We’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.

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  accommodations@paloaltonetworks.com.

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.

Is role eligible for Immigration Sponsorship?: Yes