Senior Principal DevOps Engineer

Who you are

• 10+ years of professional experience in DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or Cloud Platform Engineering, including designing and operating large-scale cloud infrastructure
• Mastery of Infrastructure as Code and cloud platforms. You have extensive, hands-on experience building and managing cloud infrastructure declaratively. You are an expert in modern IaC tools (Terraform, Helm, Crossplane/ACK/KCC) and have deep proficiency with a major cloud provider, ideally GCP
• Deep expertise in the cloud-native ecosystem. You have a thorough understanding of Kubernetes in large-scale production environments and are fluent in building automation and platform tooling using modern, typed Python
• Extensive production experience with GitOps and CI/CD: Argo CD and Argo Rollouts for continuous delivery and progressive rollout, and GitLab CI for automating complex software delivery pipelines
• Hands on with infrastructure: doesn't just use infrastructure or manage infrastructure via applications, but builds infrastructure. Examples: cloud-native, kubernetes-native, builds internal developer platforms, builds terraform providers
• A superpower for debugging. When things break, you are the person people turn to. You have a deep command of engineering fundamentals — from Linux internals and networking to application performance — that allows you to systematically diagnose and solve problems in complex distributed systems, regardless of the specific technology stack
• An innate sense of ownership and a collaborative spirit. You are a highly technical, self-motivated contributor who sees projects through from idea to production. Crucially, you are easy to work with and excel at navigating the organization, acting as a central point of collaboration for multiple engineering teams
• MLOps experience operating GPU-accelerated inference and model-serving infrastructure at scale (Google Vertex AI, Amazon Bedrock, NVIDIA Triton Inference Server)
• Advanced MLOps: data/feature pipelines, model serving (KServe/Seldon), ML security and governance, and LLMOps (RAG, eval, guardrails)
• Languages and core tooling: Python (modern, typed), Go (highly desired), BASH, rego
• Cloud-native monitoring and observability (Prometheus, Grafana, GCP Cloud Monitoring)
• Cloud security compliance, IAM controls, and securing container workloads
• Experience using AI coding assistants (Claude Code, etc.)
• BS/MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience

What the job involves

• With Prisma AIRS, Palo Alto Networks is building the world's most comprehensive AI security platform. Organizations are increasingly building complex ecosystems of AI models, applications, and agents, creating dynamic new attack surfaces with risks that traditional security approaches cannot address
• In response, Prisma AIRS delivers model security, posture management, AI red teaming, and runtime protection. Our customers can confidently deploy AI-driven innovation while ensuring a formidable security posture from development through runtime
• We are looking for a Senior Principal DevOps Engineer to join the Prisma AIRS shared services team. In this role you will be a technical leader whose influence extends across the entire Prisma AIRS organization. You won't just operate infrastructure; you'll build the platform that defines how we build and ship software, and you'll set the technical direction that other engineers build on
• Our platform is built on a modern, cloud-native foundation centered around Kubernetes. We value deep expertise in a few core areas and a strong desire to master the technologies that drive our platform forward
• Cloud and orchestration: GCP (primary), Kubernetes, AWS, containerization tools
• CI/CD and GitOps: GitLab CI, Argo CD, Argo Rollouts, GitHub Actions
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Kubernetes Config Connector (KCC), Helm, Terraform, Cue
• Languages and core tooling: Python (modern, typed), Go (highly desired), BASH, rego
• We actively leverage AI coding assistants like Claude to boost our productivity
• Act as a force multiplier for our engineering teams by building and evangelizing a cohesive Internal Developer Platform (IDP) that simplifies, builds safety into, and accelerates the path to production
• Drive the adoption of GitOps and progressive delivery across the organization. Leveraging the Argo suite, you will provide safe, automated, and observable deployment pipelines that engineering teams can trust, directly improving the quality and velocity of our product
• Elevate the organization's cloud-native expertise by setting the standard for Kubernetes and GCP best practices. Your guidance and the patterns you create will directly influence the architecture, reliability, and security of our core products
• Architect and operate a highly available, secure, and scalable cloud infrastructure. Your work will form the resilient foundation that Prisma AIRS is built upon, ensuring our customers are protected around the clock
• Manage expensive GPU/TPU resource allocation, spot-instance fleets, and cluster usage dashboards
• Reduce engineering toil and eliminate entire classes of problems through insightful automation, self-service tooling, and observability frameworks. You will give time back to every engineer in the AIRS org
• Set the technical direction for shared platform services and drive infrastructure architecture decisions across the Prisma AIRS organization
• Mentor engineers, raise the engineering bar, and champion high standards of automation, reliability, and security across teams

Benefits

• Healthcare: We value your health and provide options so you can choose what best supports your lifestyle and personal health goals. Various nationwide plans — including Blue Shield of California, Kaiser Permanente, Delta Dental, VSP, and more — are available to you and your family. Our providers offer the flexibility you want and the coverage you need
• Wellness: With a large on-site gym and daily, instructor-led exercise classes at HQ in Santa Clara, Palo Alto Networks actively supports employee fitness. Our juice bar, Gym & Juice, features fresh juice blends, a quick and nutritious option pre- or post-workout. And our ongoing wellness speaker series highlights the latest trends in health and wellness
• Development: Professional development is serious business at Palo Alto Networks, where the Talent Development team offers 25+ courses to help employees boost their careers and develop leadership capability
• Financial: Most roles are eligible for equity grants, and we now offer new hires a quarterly vesting schedule right away. We want you to be fairly compensated and rewarded as soon as you make an impact – on our team, that happens immediately! And because we consider every employee a stakeholder in our long-term success, we offer an Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) with a 24-month lookback. From life insurance to health savings accounts, we provide ways to help you protect and grow your wealth. Palo Alto Networks offers both traditional and Roth 401(k) options, along with a company match of 50% to a max annual amount of $1,000
• Time Off: In addition to paid corporate holidays, Flexible Time Off programs empower our employees to balance their work schedules with personal time off. We offer 12 weeks of full pay for medical leave and 6 weeks of full pay for parental leave. As a company with strong ties to the military and veterans, we also offer 26 weeks of full pay for military leave
• Perks: Our corporate discount program provides employees with significant discounts on merchandise, travel and entertainment. We offer many on-site perks at headquarters, including cafeterias, fuel service, dry cleaning service, EV charging stations, and a company store. We also provide complimentary drinks, fresh fruit, and snacks in break rooms across our campus to help everyone power through the day.

Life at Palo Alto Network