Sr. Principal Engineer - Cortex Xpanse, Collections

About the role

The Collections team is the foundational engine behind the Cortex Xpanse Attack Surface Management (ASM) platform. They architect, scale, and orchestrate global internet-scale discovery and scanning infrastructure. In this role, you will design distributed systems that continuously map the entire IPv4 and IPv6 internet, while building high-throughput data pipelines to create the foundation for Xpanse’s Attack Surface Management.

Responsibilities

• Build, optimize, and scale distributed backend scanning systems in Go.
• Design and develop robust data collection pipelines using Apache Beam and Java multithreading frameworks.
• Investigate new data sources and perform data analysis to estimate customer impact.
• Take ownership of projects, drive them to completion, and support them in production.
• Partner with engineering leadership, product managers, and downstream teams to define product strategy and enable the creation of new customer-facing features.
• Mentor and grow engineers, setting a high bar for technical excellence, architecture design, and system reliability.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience building backend systems.
• A track record of setting technical direction, leading architectural decisions, and delivering massive, scalable systems into production.
• Proficiency in Java or Golang is preferred, though strong experience with other modern backend languages is welcome.
• Experience building data pipelines for real-time streaming or batch processing.
• Experience with distributed systems, API design, and decoupling complex data architectures.
• Experience with at least one major cloud platform (GCP, AWS, or Azure).

Preferred Qualifications

• Have expertise with any of the following: GCP, Kubernetes, Terraform, BigQuery, PostgreSQL, MySQL, BigTable, Apache Beam.
• Familiarity with low-level Internet protocols and high-throughput network scanning.
• Experience with cybersecurity, attack surface management, or internet measurement domains.

Pay

$170,000.00 - $277,000.00/yr

Schedule

This role is based full-time in the office, with flexibility when needed.

Benefits

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 the annual range listed above. 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 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.