Staff Software Engineer(Cloudops) at Palo Alto Networks in Office - USA - CA - Headquarters

Job description

• Staff Software Engineer Cloud Ops
• As an **AI-Native Cloud Software Engineer**, you won't just manage environments; you will build the software engines, intelligent pipelines, and autonomous systems that power our cloud presence. We are shifting from rigid configuration management to AI-driven, self-healing software architectures.
• You will design, develop, and optimize highly available, distributed cloud applications and infrastructure services across AWS, Azure, and GCP. Treating the entire cloud ecosystem as a programmable, AI-orchestrated software entity, you will bridge the gap between deep systems engineering, application development, and LLM-powered systems orchestration.

Responsibilities

• Multi-Cloud Generative IaC & Software-Defined Infrastructure: Architect and maintain scalable cloud systems across AWS, Azure, and GCP using Pulumi, AWS CDK, or Terraform. Integrate AI development workflows and custom LLM agents to accelerate safe infrastructure compilation, drift detection, and automated cross-cloud refactoring.
• Intelligent Automation & Agentic Workflows: Engineer custom software utilities, internal services, and autonomous agents using (TypeScript/Node.js, Go, or Python, alongside frameworks like LangChain or CrewAI) to orchestrate complex provisioning, predictive auto-scaling, and closed-loop self-healing systems.
• AI-Driven Cloud Governance & Economics: Leverage predictive machine learning models to analyze multi-cloud spend patterns, autonomously executing real-time resource-optimization strategies via API-driven software actions (e.g., dynamic spot-instance bidding, intelligent right-sizing across AWS, Azure, and GCP).
• Cognitive Observability & Infrastructure Security: Implement next-gen observability frameworks (OpenTelemetry, Prometheus) coupled with AI anomaly detection. Embed security directly into the deployment pipeline, utilizing LLMs to automatically audit Cloud IAM policies, scan for vulnerabilities, and generate contextual patches. Intelligent
• Container Orchestration: Manage production-grade Kubernetes clusters (EKS, AKS, GKE). Optimize resource allocation, cluster auto-scaling, and service meshes using AI-driven traffic routing and predictive capacity planning.
• Autonomous Incident Response: Act as a tier-3 software escalation engineer for complex distributed systems anomalies. Help design and train our internal "On-Call AI Agent" to ingest logs, perform automated Root Cause Analysis (RCA), and submit pre-validated Pull Requests to resolve underlying system defects.

Requirements

• Software Engineering & AI Orchestration: Strong software engineering fundamentals in TypeScript (Node.js), Go, or Python. Experience interfacing with LLM APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Vertex AI, AWS Bedrock), vector databases, and prompt engineering for systems-level orchestration.
• Multi-Cloud & Containers: Deep proficiency in at least two major cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) with a strong architectural understanding of the third. Expert-level knowledge of Kubernetes (CKA preferred) and cloud-native networking.
• Next-Gen CI/CD: Experience building intelligent delivery pipelines using GitHub Actions or GitLab CI, featuring integrated automated testing, security gates, and AI-assisted code reviews.
• Systems Mastery: Deep understanding of Linux internals, distributed systems architecture, asynchronous programming patterns, and performance tuning.
• Note- While the Company may consider applicants who have current work authorization and require a transfer of an existing H-1B visa, the Company is not currently considering applicants who require new visa sponsorship (including new H-1B petitions) or individuals currently in OPT/CPT status who will require future sponsorship to maintain work authorization.
• 6+ years of experience in Cloud Software Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or Distributed Systems Infrastructure.
• 2+ years of hands-on experience integrating AI tools, LLMs, or predictive analytics into deployment workflows, pipelines, or software platforms.
• Proven track record of architecting and operating large-scale, high-throughput distributed systems.
• Soft Skills & Mindset Agentic Problem-Solving: A mindset that moves past "how do I automate this task?" to "how do I build an autonomous system that solves this permanently?"
• Collaborative AI-First Culture: Ability to partner with Core AI/ML teams to bridge the gap between model deployment and high-availability cloud infrastructure.

Skills

Required

• Cloud-native networking

Preferred

• CKA certification

Benefits

• 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 the annual range listed below. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.
• $124,500.00 - $201,300.00/yr