Principal Solution Architect Cortex jobs at Palo Alto in United States, Seattle

We define the industry, instead of waiting for directions. We need individuals who feel comfortable in ambiguity, excited by the prospect of a challenge, and empowered by the unknown risks facing our everyday lives that are only enabled by a secure digital environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and build innovative, scalable software products to ensure our customers can use AI securely
• Own new features/functionality from start to finish. Participate in all phases of the product development cycle, from definition, design, through implementation and test. Ensure that applications are production-ready, scalable, and reliable
• Collaborate with product managers, frontend software engineers, product designers, and infrastructure engineers to shape the future of Prisma AIRS Model Security
• Operate production services with hundreds of enterprise customers as a true owner, ensuring that Prisma AIRS customers experience top-notch reliability, availability, and performance
• Develop expertise in new technologies and keep up with the rapidly evolving AI security landscape

Preferred Qualifications

• Expertise in at least one programming language such as modern Python (type hints, Pydantic, etc), Go, Java, C#, or C++
• 8+ years experience in designing large distributed system and web services in the cloud
• Experience writing comprehensive unit, integration, and end-to-end tests
• Experience with a major cloud provider like GCP (preferred), AWS, or Azure
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, GitLab, and Grafana is a plus
• Experience partnering with front end engineers (collaborate on schema required to power a UI, for example) is a plus
• Excellent written and verbal communication, able to collaborate and convey ideas effectively
• Self-disciplined, self-managed, self-motivated, and strong sense of ownership, urgency, and drive
• Ready to understand and dissect new technology stacks quickly
• Excited about working in an agile and fast paced environment.
• BS or MS in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent professional experience or equivalent military experience

Salary 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 $147000/YR - $237500/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found .

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.

Your Impact

• Define and drive the technical vision and long-term strategy for multiple complex, highly distributed backend systems.
• Lead the end-to-end architecture and design of innovative, cross-functional product initiatives, ensuring solutions are scalable, reliable, and secure for a global enterprise.
• Influence technical and product roadmaps by collaborating with senior leaders, product managers, and engineers across multiple organizations.
• Serve as a hands-on technical leader, providing mentorship and raising the technical bar for other senior and staff-level engineers, fostering a culture of engineering excellence.
• Pioneer and evangelize best practices for software development, operational excellence, and architectural patterns that impact entire product lines.

Your Experience

• Deep and proven experience (12+ years) of architecting, building, and launching complex, large-scale distributed systems with significant business impact.
• Expert-level proficiency in modern Python or at least one strongly typed programming language such as Go, Java, or C++.
• Deep expertise in modern cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) with a track record of building highly scalable and resilient cloud-native applications.
• Demonstrable experience operating mission-critical systems in production with stringent SLAs, including on-call leadership and incident response.
• Extensive experience with Kubernetes and the cloud-native ecosystem, including a deep understanding of its internals and operational best practices.
• Experience with machine learning (ML/MLOps), security, or data engineering would be a significant advantage.
• Exceptional communication and presentation skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and possess the ability to drive clarity and alignment on technical direction in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment.

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 $212,000 - $240,000/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found .

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.

Your Career As a Principal Consultant for SOC Transformation & XSIAM Deployment, you will be a seasoned leader at the forefront of our most strategic customer engagements. You will leverage a rare blend of consultative presence, deep technical mastery, and executive influence to guide our customers through complex SOC transformations. Your primary role is to drive these large-scale programs, ensuring the successful execution of foundational elements like seamless log migration and the development of sophisticated detection strategies, to deliver measurable security outcomes in highly dynamic enterprise environments.

Your Impact

• Serve as the lead strategic advisor and subject matter expert for customers undertaking a full-scale SOC modernization with XSIAM.

• Lead multi-national SOC transformation programs, consolidating fragmented detection and response processes into a unified, AI-driven platform.

• Direct enterprise-scale XSIAM deployments, guiding customers from initial strategy to full operationalization.

• Devise and oversee comprehensive log ingestion strategies to ensure high-quality data fuels the XSIAM platform.

• Architect and implement sophisticated detection strategies and correlation rules to fortify customer defenses against advanced threats.

• Fine-tune and optimize log sources and correlation rules to maximize system performance and detection efficacy.

• Identify opportunities to enhance analyst alert handling and response through automation.

• Transform ambiguity into structured action plans, driving accountability at every level of a customer engagement.

• Build and mentor high-performing professional services teams that blend consulting, engineering, and change management expertise.

• Partner with Product and R&D teams to incorporate field insights into roadmap priorities.

Your Experience

• A proven track record in modernizing Security Operations Centers (SOCs) to achieve automation, AI-driven detection, and measurable improvements in MTTD/MTTR.

• Exceptional executive presence, with strong verbal and written communication skills to engage with stakeholders from the SOC analyst to the CISO.

• Experience acting as a trusted advisor to senior security leaders, with the ability to diagnose challenges and deliver strategic recommendations.

• 10+ years of hands-on experience in deploying and integrating SIEM/security analytics solutions within large enterprise environments.

• 8+ years of experience with Security Operations Center (SOC) tooling, processes, and workflows.

• Hands-on technical mastery across SIEM, SOAR, EDR, cloud security, and threat intelligence.

• Ability to conceive, architect, and develop effective correlation and detection rules.

• Familiarity with a range of SIEM technologies, such as Splunk and IBM QRadar, is a plus.

• Strong expertise in Regular Expressions (Regex).

• Relevant bachelor's degree or industry-recognized qualifications (CISSP, GIAC, etc.), is a plus.

• Must be able to travel up to 30%.

As threats and technology evolve, we stay in step to accomplish our mission. You’ll be involved in implementing new products, transitioning from old products to new, and will fix integrations and critical issues as they are raised. But you won’t wait for them to be raised, you’ll seek them out, too. We fix and identify technical problems, with a pointed focus of providing the best customer support in the industry.

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 $163,000 - $189,000/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found .

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.

Your Career

As a Domain Consultant for SOC Transformation you will be the expert for our Cortex portfolio, a Next-Gen AI-powered security operations platform. You will play a key role in defining technical solutions that secure a customer’s key business imperatives. You evangelize our industry leading solutions in Security Intelligence and Automation, XDR, Attack Surface Management, SOAR and Incident Response that establish Palo Alto Networks as a customer’s cybersecurity partner of choice.

Your Impact

• Collaborate with account teams to recommend and develop customer solutions within your assigned specialization area
• Present to customers as our expert at all levels in the customer hierarchy, from practitioner to senior leadership
• As the main technical point of contact for Cortex, you will assist and collaborate to respond effectively to RFIs/RFPs
• Lead and support customer demonstrations that showcase our unique value proposition
• Scope and lead Proof of Value (PoV) projects for prospective customers and partners based on best practices to ensure technical win in your assigned opportunities
• Drive high technical validation and PoV win rates within your assigned specialization area
• Responsible for discussing and highlighting product alignment with customer requirements and differentiation
• Architect solutions that will help our customers strengthen and simplify their security posture
• Document High-Level Design and Key Use Cases to ensure proper implementation and value realization of Palo Alto Networks Solutions
• Help our customers build and develop further their services around Cortex solutions
• Lead conversations about industry trends and emerging changes to the security landscape
• Discuss, with credibility, competitive offers in the marketplace and position ours as the best alternative
• Position Palo Alto Networks or Partner delivered services as appropriate to ensure proper implementation and value realization of Palo Alto Networks solutions
• Initiate projects to improve individual team’s performance
• Implement organizational policies & help others adopt
• Act as a conduit for customer feedback to Product Management, Technical Marketing, competitor intelligence, and R&D to create requirements and deliver product features for our customers

Your Experience

• 6+ years experience in Security Operations or pre-sales/sales engineering within SIEM, SOAR, SOC, and/or XDR/EDR environments
• IBM Qradar design, deployment, and/or pre-sales experience highly desirable
• Experience in working with customers, demonstrating problem-solving skills and a can-do attitude
• Solid understanding of Security Operations Center processes
• Advanced knowledge of SIEM and/or SOAR solutions
• Scripting experience is a plus - Python preferred

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 between $198,000/yr to $273,000/yr. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found .

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.

● Join the fastest growing team where experience meets cutting-edge solutions.
● Build and cultivate strong customer relationships, driving business growth within the region.
● Partner with the core sales team to align customer strategies and engagements with Cortex
and Cloud business objectives.
● Take full ownership of leading strategic sales campaigns, sales forecasting, utilizing in-depth
knowledge of sales cycles from initial contact through procurement.
● Engage in deep technical discussions beyond standard sales presentations and pitches;
while translating complex technical cybersecurity solutions into clear business value
propositions for customers.
● Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams, including sales engineers, to provide tailored
customer-centric solutions.
● Partner with Alliances to develop joint strategies, enhance customer engagement and deliver
innovative solutions for existing and prospective clients.
● Travel domestically as needed to meet with customers and attend key business events.

Your Experience

• 5+ years of field sales experience focusing on key customer accounts and delivering value to
  Enterprise or Major-level accounts in the cybersecurity industry.
  ● Extensive platform selling experience in complex sales with multiple buying centers.
  ● Experience selling SIEM, EDR or CNAPP (DevSecOps, CloudOps) solutions is highly
  preferred.
  ● Established trusted relationships with CIOs and CISOs with the ability to influence and drive
  strategic conversations.
  ● Expertise in applying complex solution sales methodologies to drive results.
  ● Experience working with channel partners and a deep understanding of a channel-centric
  go-to-market strategy.
  ● Demonstrated ability to thrive in a fast-paced, high-growth startup environment while
  collaborating effectively with sales engineers and cross-functional teams.
  ● Experience operating in a continuous adoption, expansion, and upsell sales motion within a
  matrixed sales organization is preferred.
  ● Willingness to travel domestically as necessary to meet business needs.

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 between $256000 - $352000/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found .

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

This role may require travel to and from Palo Alto Networks, Inc. business meetings and events and requires reliable transportation to do so. If a hire chooses to drive in connection with company business, the hire for this role must maintain a valid driver’s license.

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.

Your Career

As a Principal Solutions Architect at Palo Alto Networks, you are responsible for improving the productivity of our sales teams through the creation and delivery of business-relevant security conversations to our key prospects and customers. As a thought leader, you will address CyberSecurity related issues by leveraging the full Palo Alto Networks portfolio in a way that creates differentiated business value. As a trusted advisor, you will provide valuable insights and education on effective risk reduction, compliance, governance, and cost reduction through a prevention-first security approach based on the Palo Alto Networks security platform.

The Principal Solutions Architect’s value is measured in their ability to increase sales productivity by:

• Compelling communication to gain the trust and buy-in from Vice President and CXO contacts at our largest customers and prospects

• Setting and driving an agenda with the customer or prospect, both directly and with sales teams, and within the market through various engagements, including client workshops and architectural assessments and designs

• Developing and maintaining a deep understanding of competing solutions and architectures and being able to position a Palo Alto Networks approach successfully

• Uncovering new technology applications and use cases and aiding in creating presentations, documents, and deliverables that will illustrate value to prospects and customers and the Palo Alto Networks sales teams

• Uncovering and documenting technological/business value gaps between the Palo Alto Networks Cortex platform and competitive offerings and communicating these to the broader Palo Alto Networks Sales organization

• Becoming a valued resource to Product Management to discover and understand current shortcomings and competitive insights in our product suite and requirements for future strategic market segments

• Playing a role on the EBC team in creating customer messaging that ties the Cortex Portfolio together with the entire Palo Alto Networks Portfolio

• The role will require close coordination with the Senior Leadership, Sales, Palo Alto Networks’ CISO and Theater CISO’s, Sales Engineering leadership, Product Management, Marketing, Channel Partners, and the Consulting Engineering team. This is a senior technical customer-facing role, and the value produced must be evident and recurrent. Customers and Sales Teams will ask for you by name.

Your Impact

• In this director-level role, you will lead and direct cross-functional teams within Palo Alto Networks to ensure the highest quality of product and service delivery focused on customer business outcomes

• As a thought leader, you will address customers and prospects security operations challenges and work with them to develop a successful strategy for their organization to implement Palo Alto Networks Cortex technologies in a way that creates differentiated business value

• Engage and establish an advisory relationship with key Manager, Director, VP, and CXO contacts at strategic customers to transform their security strategy

• Engage directly with senior technical and business leaders at key prospects and customers as a security expert to penetrate whitespace accounts and expand Cortex install base through the Identification, qualification, and closure of opportunities

• Work with the sales teams on strategic opportunities for the development and delivery of differentiated proposals which clearly demonstrate the business and technical value of Cortex

• Provide summarized and business-relevant feedback into content, Product Management, Product Marketing, Competitive Marketing, and Field Marketing based on customer engagements to improve Palo Alto Networks effectiveness in communicating its value proposition to prospects and clients

• Engage in continuous self-improvement and learning to maintain technical leadership of relevant technologies (security, data center, public cloud, networking, endpoint, etc.)

• As a trusted advisor, you will provide valuable insights and education on effective risk reduction, compliance, governance, and cost reduction through a prevention-first security approach based on the Palo Alto Networks security platform

• Becoming a valued resource to Product Management to discover and understand current shortcomings and competitive insights in our product suite and requirements for future strategic market segments

• Develop and maintain ongoing executive-level relationships with our largest XSIAM Customers to drive continued platform satisfaction and adoption

• Delivery of targeted CXO-level Threat and Risk Management Briefings by leveraging U42 research and Xpanse ASM Mappings

• Developing and maintaining an executive-level point of view on Cybersecurity trends with a deep understanding of security operations and the ability to successfully position a Palo Alto Networks approach

Your Experience

• Self-motivated and "Whatever it takes" attitude and motivation to do whatever is necessary to close deals

• Extensive knowledge of security operations, SIEM, attack surface management, network and endpoint security architectures, history, and trends

• Experience with SIEM, Log Management, XDR/EDR, and security investigation tools commonly used by large customers to run their security programs

• Knowledge of ancillary security areas such as identity management, public and private cloud architectures

• Demonstrable experience in establishing credibility and strategic messaging with large enterprise customers

• BSCS or equivalent or equivalent military experience required and 10+ years of experience as an end customer and/or as a vendor

• Expect to travel a minimum of 50%+ of the weeks in the fiscal year - This is a global role and will require travel both in theater and internationally - Travel will include customer and Palo Alto Networks location onsite meetings

• Strong communication (written and verbal) and presentation skills, both internally and externally

• Robust problem finding and solving skills, ability to analyze complex multivariate problems, and systematic approach to gain quick resolution, even under duress

• Super organizational skills

Preferences

• Experience working with channel partners and understanding a channel-centric go-to-market approach

• Experience working with companies in the enterprise security space

• End customer background to validate your perspective with customers

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 $239000 - $278750YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found .

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.

Your Career

The Technical Solutions Architect is a global role, with a particular focus on Microsoft and Oracle as CSP (cloud service provider) partners. This position is responsible for providing technical leadership and strategy for the CSP build with and sell through partnership on Microsoft Azure and OCI. You will be the expert on our technology/solutions with these partners. You will help navigate current and future offerings/architectures from Microsoft (not just Azure) and Oracle (not just OCI), and provide prescriptive guidance to Palo Alto Networks’ Product and Field teams on areas of collaboration and potential overlap.

Your Impact

• Understand the CSP’s and PANW’s security offerings at a deeper level, including the CSP’s current and future roadmap of security offerings
• Be a thought leader in identifying future integration opportunities with the CSP’s security offerings
• Present to customers as the expert in your area at all levels in the customer hierarchy from technician to CIO/CISO
• Converse at a C-level on industry trends and emerging changes to the cloud cybersecurity landscape that every customer must be aware of and planning to deal with
• Direct discussions of competitive nature in the marketplace and position the best alternative
• Lead demonstrations of product from beginning to end that showcase our unique value
• In-person and remote interactions with customers must be equally persuasive
• Create architectures that will enable PANW field teams, or customers, or the CSP to show the overlap/complementary nature of the PANW and CSP products/solutions.
• Maintain existing and create new integrations (including developing solution briefs) with the CSP that don’t require the product team’s involvement
• Achieve competencies with the CSPs to maintain and elevate our partnership to new levels.
• Provide design consultation and best practice guidance for rollout, implementation, and policy conversion during the 'pre-sales' process for strategic opportunities
• Engage in any critical biz development projects with CSP by being the technical expert/advisor
• Work with Product Management, Technical Marketing, and R&D to create requirements and product features for our customers, and provide feedback from customers
• Participate in customer-facing webinars to generate leads
• Present product update/roadmaps and enhancement training to other SEs and CSP Engineers in the region or theater
• Deliver demos for strategic prospects and current accounts in all facets of Palo Alto Networks offerings and integrations in CSP environments.
• Train fellow teammates/colleagues as well as CSP Engineers and partners.
• Provide advanced “CSP Engineer” training for updates in the Palo Alto Networks and CSP product suite
• Help establish and manage POC environments and lead partner and customer presentations in support of the CSP business

Your Experience

• In-depth technical knowledge of public cloud, CSP offered services both from a technology and a business perspective
• Demonstrated ability to sell, demonstrate, install and troubleshoot products
• Can present and demonstrate at high-level and have a discussion of these environments
• Ability to write code for integrations
• Scripting capabilities in Azure as well as knowledge in Terraform and Python
• Experience in basic L2-L4 Networking (Cloud Networking Architectures, IP routing including BGP, L4 Load balancing)
• Experience with cloud and security in cloud - IaaS, SaaS and PaaS products, preferably with Microsoft Azure and Azure Networking
• BSCS or equivalent and 8+ years of experience as an SE or equivalent military experience required
• Demonstrated ability to work in a virtual and matrix environment
• Proven ability to manage a myriad of different disciplines and tasks in a high pressure, time sensitive environment
• 40%-50% travel with ability to travel internationally
• Strong communication (written and verbal),presentation, and demonstration skills
• “Self-Motivated” and "Whatever it takes" attitude and motivation to do whatever necessary to assist in winning business
• Think on your feet to answer questions and respond with insight and poise that are relevant

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 $186000/yr - $255000/yr. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found .

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.