Principal AI Engineer, Enterprise AI Platform

Company Description

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

We take our mission of protecting the digital way of life seriously. We are relentless in protecting our customers and we believe that the unique ideas of every member of our team contributes to our collective success. Our values were crowdsourced by employees and are brought to life through each of us everyday - from disruptive innovation and collaboration, to execution. From showing up for each other with integrity to creating an environment where we all feel included.

As a member of our team, you will be shaping the future of cybersecurity. We work fast, value ongoing learning, and we respect each employee as a unique individual. Knowing we all have different needs, our development and personal wellbeing programs are designed to give you choice in how you are supported. This includes our FLEXBenefits wellbeing spending account with over 1,000 eligible items selected by employees, our mental and financial health resources, and our personalized learning opportunities - just to name a few!

At Palo Alto Networks, we believe in the power of collaboration and value in-person interactions. This is why our employees generally work full time from our office with flexibility offered where needed. This setup fosters casual conversations, problem-solving, and trusted relationships. Our goal is to create an environment where we all win with precision.

Job Description

Your Career

As a Principal AI Engineer for the Enterprise AI Platform, you will be a pivotal technical leader driving the identification, design, and hands-on implementation of AI-powered solutions that directly address critical business challenges across IT and all enterprise functions (Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR, Legal, etc.). You will operate where AI innovation, top-tier engineering, and significant business outcomes converge, acting as the technical bridge between complex business problems and cutting-edge AI execution. Leveraging our robust Enterprise AI Platform, you will translate ambiguous problems into concrete AI solution designs, build core components of these solutions, and ensure their successful deployment and measurable impact, supporting both code-based and low-code/no-code approaches.

Your Impact

• Applied AI Solution Design & Architecture: Deeply understand complex business problems and strategic objectives across various enterprise functions. Break down ambiguous AI problems into concrete, actionable AI solution designs, including identifying the appropriate AI models, data requirements, and integration points for end-to-end AI applications.
• Hands-on Development & Implementation: Lead the hands-on development and implementation of key components of the AI assistant, agent, app, supporting both traditional and Generative AI model development, deployment, and real-time inference systems. Drive the successful integration of experimental AI technologies into production, showcasing tangible business value through rapid prototyping and measurable results.
• System Design & Optimization: Contribute significantly to the detailed design of large-scale, distributed AI/ML systems, ensuring performance, reliability, security, and developer-friendliness. Optimize existing systems for scalability, efficiency, and maintainability, ensuring the platform's ability to handle massive scale data and inference requests, optimizing for low latency and high throughput for real-time AI applications.
• Rapid Experimentation & Integration: Evaluate and integrate new AI tools, frameworks, SDKs, and cloud solutions into the platform, ensuring alignment with architectural strategy and engineering needs. Lead proof-of-concepts (POCs) for emerging AI innovations and drive their integration into production through long-term architectural evolution.
• Architectural Adherence & Best Practices: Champion and enforce design standards, patterns, and best practices for scalable and secure development of AI assistants, agents, and applications across various teams.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Provide technical leadership and mentorship to other AI and ML engineers, fostering a culture of engineering excellence, innovation, and hands-on experimentation within the team and across the company.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner effectively with executive leadership, data science te