Principal Software Engineer (prisma Access - Networking)

Principal Software Engineer (Prisma Access - Networking)

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.

We believe collaboration thrives in person. That's why most of our teams work from the office full time, with flexibility when it's needed. This model supports real-time problem-solving, stronger relationships, and the kind of precision that drives great outcomes.

Job Description

Prisma Access™ SASE (formally GlobalProtect Cloud Service) provides protection straight from the cloud to make access to the cloud secure. It combines the connectivity and security you need and delivers it everywhere you need it. Using cutting-edge public and private cloud technologies extending the next-generation security protection to all cloud services, customers on-premise remote networks and mobile users.

We are seeking an experienced Software Engineer to design, develop and deliver next-generation technologies within our Prisma Access team. We want passionate engineers who love to code and build great products. Engineers who bring new ideas in all facets of software development. We are looking for leaders who take ownership of their areas of focus and who are driven to solve problems at every level. Collaboration and teamwork are at the foundation of our culture and we need engineers who can communicate at a high level and work well with others towards achieving a common goal.

Your impact:

• Design, develop and implement highly scalable software features on our next-generation security platform as part of Prisma Access
• Work with different development and quality assurance groups to achieve best in quality software
• Suggest and implement improvements to the development process
• Work with DevOps and the Technical Support teams to troubleshoot customer issues

Qualifications

Your experience:

• B.S. with 10+ years or M.S. with 8+ years of experience in systems engineering, specifically focusing on high-performance networking or operating system internals.
• Expertise in L3 Control Plane protocols: Architectural knowledge of BGP (including EVPN/VXLAN), OSPF, and IPv6 stack internals.
• Strong Linux Systems Programming: Proficiency in C/C++ and Python is required, with a focus on multi-threaded applications, IPC, and Linux kernel interfaces (e.g., Netlink).
• Proven experience in refactoring or migrating core system components (like routing stacks) within a live production environment.
• Demonstrated history and/or interest in contributing to open-source networking or systems projects; ability to influence community roadmaps and maintain upstream relations.
• Familiarity with integrating software routing suites with underlying hardware abstraction layers.
• Distributed Systems: Understanding of high availability (HA) in networking, including graceful restart mechanisms and state synchronization across distributed nodes.
• Cloud & Virtualization: Experience with software-defined networking (SDN) in cloud environments (AWS/GCP/Azure) and container networking interfaces (CNI).