Senior Principal Cloud Architect (Office of the CPO: Innovation Team)

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

This role is remote, but distance is no barrier to impact. Our hybrid teams collaborate across geographies to solve big problems, stay close to our customers, and grow together. You will be part of a culture that values trust, accountability, and shared success where your work truly matters.

Your Career

As a Principal Cloud Architect in the Innovation Team, you will lead the secure software and infrastructure architecture for our most advanced experiments. You will define and govern the secure infrastructure backbone, driving the architectural design and rapid prototyping of cloud-native security solutions. You will be instrumental in fusing rigorous enterprise security standards and expert software architecture design with agile development to accelerate our next-generation product roadmap.

Your Impact

• Secure Software Architecture & Design: Serve as the principal architect for new solutions, translating complex security requirements into high-level, modular software and system designs. Govern the architectural principles for performance, reliability, and security across the entire application stack.

• Architect & Deploy Secure Infrastructure: Design and build resilient, secure-by-design cloud infrastructure primarily on GCP, while establishing multi-cloud interoperability patterns (AWS, Azure) to support diverse customer environments.

• Rapid Prototyping & Software Development: Take abstract ideas and rapidly build functional Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) and Proofs of Concept (PoCs), writing production-grade code (with a focus on Python) for custom automation, application logic, and integration layers. Validate new security technologies, acting as the bridge between "what if" and "what works."

• DevSecOps & Automation: Champion a "shift-left" methodology by building automated CI/CD pipelines, container security strategies, and Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform/Ansible) that ensure speed never compromises safety.

• Strategic Collaboration: Partner deeply with InfoSec teams to bake governance into experimental architectures, and collaborate with Sales Architects to translate technical innovations into scalable, market-ready solutions.

• Technology Evaluation: Continuously research emerging cloud security tools and architectures to maintain a cutting-edge technology stack for the team.

• Mentorship & Vision: Provide technical leadership and architectural mentorship to senior engineers and communicate complex architectural trade-offs to executive stakeholders and product leadership.

Your Experience 

• 10+ years in software engineering, cloud architecture, or site reliability engineering (SRE), with a specific focus on designing and implementing security-centric software systems and infrastructure.

• Cloud Mastery: Deep expertise in GCP, AWS, and/or Azure (GCP preferred).

• Architecture Mastery: Proven experience in designing complex, highly available, and scalable distributed systems. Ability to document and defend architectural decisions across the software stack.

• Security Engineering Depth: Hands-on experience designing and implementing core security controls (e.g., authentication/authorization, secrets management, data encryption in transit/at rest) within a cloud-native application context.

• Coding: Strong full-stack programming proficiency with Python (required); additional experience with Go, Node.js, or modern frontend frameworks (React/Vue) is preferred.

• DevSecOps Authority: Proven background in automation and orchestration, including Kubernetes, Docker, and CI/CD security scanning tools.

• Versatility: A demonstrated ability to pivot between "hacker mode" (building rapid prototypes/MVPs) and "architect mode" (designing long-term, compliant enterprise solutions).

• Communication: Ability to articulate technical strategy to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• B.S. or higher in CS, Engineering, or related field; M.S. preferred or equivalent military experience.

The Team

You will join a small, fast-moving Innovation Team inside the Office of the CPO. You will partner deeply with InfoSec, Product, Engineering, and DevOps to incubate breakthrough capabilities and solve complex security problems at an enterprise scale.

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 $170,000-270,000/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.