Principal Machine Learning Engineer (Advanced Threat Protection)
Palo Alto Networks1 day ago
Base Salary
$163k - $264k/yr
Responsibilities
- Architect and implement ML- and GenAI-powered agentic systems with dynamic planning, multi-step execution, self-correction, and multi-agent or human-in-the-loop collaboration.
- Build, evaluate, diagnose, and fine-tune LLMs, SLMs, and multimodal architectures using approaches such as SFT, DPO/RLHF, and PEFT/LoRA.
- Profile, debug, and optimize model training and inference on GPU clusters, including memory allocation, distributed communication, synchronization, and compute utilization.
- Architect scalable preprocessing, feature extraction, and real-time endpoint telemetry pipelines.
- Lead end-to-end engineering from prototype through enterprise production, including prompt architecture, agent memory, context optimization, tool use, and safety guardrails.
- Evaluate agent frameworks, model-serving engines, and accelerator architectures to guide technical roadmaps.
- Collaborate cross-functionally to transform security telemetry into reliable cloud security and Security-as-a-Service offerings.
Requirements
- 7+ years of professional software engineering experience and a record of deploying production-grade ML, GenAI, or agentic architectures at enterprise scale.
- Advanced Python proficiency and production-level Go or Java experience for distributed microservices.
- Hands-on experience building and scaling data pipelines with Apache Spark, core data tools, SQL, BigQuery schema design, and Google Cloud infrastructure including Dataproc, GKE, and GCP SDKs.
- Operational experience with LLMs and SLMs, including model diagnosis, dataset curation, parameter-efficient fine-tuning, loss monitoring, alignment, and evaluation benchmarks.
- Experience with GPU profiling and debugging, CUDA memory optimization, multi-GPU synchronization, batch throughput tuning, and GPU compute failure resolution.
- Understanding of RAG, vector storage, prompt optimization, model evaluation metrics, and applied statistical modeling.
- BS or MS in Computer Science, Data Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- Preferred: cybersecurity, threat detection, or cloud security knowledge; L3–L7 networking, packet inspection, and network security topology knowledge; and experience with high-volume cybersecurity telemetry, endpoint detection data, or real-time threat intelligence feeds.
Benefits
- Most teams work from the office full time, with flexibility when needed.
- Employee benefits are available through the company benefits program.
- The compensation package may include restricted stock units and a bonus in addition to base salary.
Tech Stack
Categories
About Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks builds cybersecurity products for enterprises and governments, including next-generation firewalls, cloud security (Prisma Cloud/Prisma Access), and SOC tools (Cortex). It sells subscriptions and appliances with cloud-delivered threat intelligence, securing networks, endpoints, and applications across data centers and public clouds. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California, the company is publicly traded on the NYSE under the ticker PANW.