Staff AI/ML Scientist

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 Staff AI Scientist at Palo Alto Networks, you’ll contribute to the development of cutting-edge AI and machine learning solutions that solve high-impact problems across cybersecurity and enterprise operations. This is a senior-level individual contributor role focused on research, experimentation, and production development—not technical leadership or architectural ownership. You’ll work on a collaborative team of engineers and scientists, applying your expertise to build intelligent systems that enhance products, automate complex workflows, and drive measurable value.

Your Impact

• Research and implement advanced AI/ML models in areas such as LLMs, generative AI, deep learning, reinforcement learning, NLP, or computer vision

• Contribute to the design and development of scalable, production-ready solutions in close partnership with engineering and product teams

• Write clean, maintainable, and efficient code—primarily in Python—using modern ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX)

• Run experiments, evaluate model performance, and iterate quickly to improve accuracy, reliability, and impact

• Collaborate cross-functionally to understand use cases, define requirements, and integrate models into broader systems

• Stay current with AI/ML research and bring new techniques and tools into the team’s workflow when appropriate

• Share knowledge with peers through documentation, code reviews, and informal mentorship

Qualifications

Your Experience 

• PhD in a relevant field with 1+ years of industry experience, or MSc with 3+ years, or BSc with 5+ years

• Strong programming skills in Python, with experience in ML/AI toolkits such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX

• Proven ability to implement and optimize models for real-world applications

• Experience working with structured and unstructured data, and applying ML to production environments

• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and MLOps best practices

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with attention to detail

• Bonus: experience with Spark or distributed computing frameworks; publications or open-source contributions a plus

Additional Information

The Team

To stay ahead of the curve, it’s critical to know where the curve is, and how to anticipate the changes we’re facing. For the fastest-growing cybersecurity company, the curve is the evolution of cyberattacks and the products and services that proactively address them.

You will be part of a growing, passionate, and dynamic team with an opportunity to work on challenging and exciting projects — centered on what we believe is one of the most significant mission statements in the world. We also strive to be the most people-cen