Senior Principal Cloud Architect (Office of the CPO: Innovation Team)

Company Description

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks , we're united by a shared mission-to protect our digital way of life. We thrive at the intersection of innovation and impact, solving real-world problems with cutting-edge technology and bold thinking. Here, everyone has a voice, and every idea counts. If you're ready to do the most meaningful work of your career alongside people who are just as passionate as you are, you're in the right place.

Who We Are

In order to be the cybersecurity partner of choice, we must trailblaze the path and shape the future of our industry. This is something our employees work at each day and is defined by our values: Disruption, Collaboration, Execution, Integrity, and Inclusion. We weave AI into the fabric of everything we do and use it to augment the impact every individual can have. If you are passionate about solving real-world problems and ideating beside the best and the brightest, we invite you to join us!

This role is remote, but distance is no barrier to impact. Our hybrid teams collaborate across geographies to solve big problems, stay close to our customers, and grow together. You will be part of a culture that values trust, accountability, and shared success where your work truly matters.

The Team

You will join a small, fast-moving Innovation Team inside the Office of the CPO. You will partner deeply with InfoSec, Product, Engineering, and DevOps to incubate breakthrough capabilities and solve complex security problems at an enterprise scale.

Job Description

Job Summary

As a Senior Principal Cloud Architect in the Innovation Team, you will lead the secure software and infrastructure architecture for our most advanced experiments. You will define and govern the secure infrastructure backbone, driving the architectural design and rapid prototyping of cloud-native security solutions. You will be instrumental in fusing rigorous enterprise security standards and expert software architecture design with agile development to accelerate our next-generation product roadmap.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the principal architect for new solutions, translating complex security requirements into high-level, modular software and system designs.
• Architect and deploy resilient, secure-by-design cloud infrastructure on Google Cloud Platform, while establishing multi-cloud interoperability patterns for AWS and Azure.
• Lead rapid prototyping of Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), writing production-grade Python code for custom automation, application logic, and integration layers.
• Champion a 'shift-left' security methodology by building automated CI/CD pipelines and implementing Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform/Ansible).
• Proactively collaborate with InfoSec and Sales Architects to integrate governance and translate technical innovations into scalable, market-ready solutions.
• Continuously research and evaluate emerging cloud security tools and architectures to maintain a cutting-edge technology stack.
• Provide technical leadership and architectural mentorship to senior engineers, communicating complex architectural trade-offs to executive stakeholders.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree with 10+ years of experience, Master's degree with 8+ years of experience, or PhD with 5+ years of experience in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent military/work experience.
• Extensive experience in software engineering, cloud architecture, or SRE, with a focus on designing security-centric software systems and infrastructure.
• Proven expertise in designing complex, highly available, and scalable distributed systems on at least one major cloud platform (Google Cloud Platform, AWS, Azure).
• Strong, hands-on programming proficiency in Python.
• Demonstrated experience designing and implementing core security controls (e.g., authentication/authorization, secrets management, data encryption) in a cloud-native context.
• Communication: Ability to articulate technical strategy to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• Deep expertise and hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform (Google Cloud Platform).
• Experience with Go, Node.js, or modern frontend frameworks (e.g., React, Vue).
• Proven background in DevSecOps automation and orchestration using tools like Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, and CI/CD security scanners.

Additional Information

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 $170,000-270,000/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.

Our Commitment

We're problem solvers that take risks and challenge cybersecurity's status quo. It's simple: we can't accomplish our mission without diverse teams innovating, together.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for all qualified individuals with a disability. If you require assistance or accommodation due to a disability or special need, please contact us at

Palo Alto Networks is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity in our workplace, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or other legally protected characteristics.

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