Director, Software Engineering (ADEM) at Palo Alto Networks

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!

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 Summary

Your Career

Palo Alto Networks® is shaping the future with technology that is transforming the way people and organizations operate in the cloud, at the network edge, and everywhere in between. As the Director of Software Engineering for ADEM, you will oversee the development of high-scale backend systems and endpoint technologies that monitor and optimize the digital experience for millions of users globally. You are a leader who thrives on building high-performance teams, navigating architectural complexity at a massive scale, and championing the next frontier of AI-driven engineering.

Your Impact

Strategic Leadership: Define and execute the technical roadmap for the ADEM platform, ensuring it remains the industry leader in autonomous digital experience management.

• Drive AIOps & Innovation: Lead the transition from traditional monitoring to Agentic AI workflows, where the platform proactively identifies and remediates performance bottlenecks before they impact the user.

• Engineering Efficiency: Champion a modern SDLC by mandating and integrating AI-powered development tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf) to drive productivity gains across your engineering pods.

• Scale & Performance: Own the architecture that processes billions of telemetry events daily across a global footprint, maintaining sub-second latency and five-nines reliability.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership

• Technical Vision: Define and execute the roadmap for an AI-first ADEM ecosystem, driving the transition from traditional monitoring to proactive, autonomous self-healing architectures.

• Architectural Evolution: Lead the design of high-scale, cloud-native services that prioritize "Secure AI by Design" and efficient, global-scale GCP utilization.

Execution & Delivery

• Engineering Efficiency: Oversee the delivery of high-throughput telemetry pipelines while mandating the use of AI-powered tools (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf) to radically accelerate the SDLC.

• Operational Excellence: Ensure enterprise-grade reliability (five-nines) across a global footprint, balancing peak system performance with strategic cloud-cost optimization.

Collaboration & Influence

• Cross-Functional Synergy: Partner with Product Management, Data Science, and Security teams to integrate advanced ML models into the ADEM observability fabric.

• Executive Representation: Serve as the primary technical authority for ADEM in executive forums, influencing the broader SASE roadmap and supporting high-stakes customer engagements.

People & Culture

• Talent Scale: Build and mentor a world-class organization of Engineering Managers and Principal Engineers, fostering a robust leadership and technical pipeline.

• Ownership Culture: Cultivate an environment of extreme ownership and innovation, empowering distributed teams to solve high-ambiguity challenges in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Engineering Leadership: 15+ years in software engineering with 5+ years leading large, distributed organizations and managing other managers.

• AI-Powered Development: Expert at leveraging and mandating AI-assist tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, or Copilot) to accelerate the SDLC and drive team-wide productivity.

• Cloud-Native Scale: Proven track record building multi-tenant, high-throughput systems (Go, Python, K8s, Kafka) on GCP or AWS.

• Observability & Telemetry: Deep expertise in high-volume data pipelines, synthetic monitoring, and real-time analytics.

• Strategic Communication: Ability to translate complex architectural roadmaps into clear, high-impact business outcomes for executive stakeholders.

• Education: BS or MS in Computer Science or a related technical field.

Preferred Qualifications

• SASE & Zero Trust: Domain experience in Secure Access Service Edge, SD-WAN, or GlobalProtect.

• AI/ML Innovation: Experience integrating LLMs or AIOps for automated system remediation.

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/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.

$232,000.00 - $320,750.00/yr

Our Commitment

We’re trailblazers that dream big, 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 accommodations@paloaltonetworks.com.

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.

Is role eligible for Immigration Sponsorship?: Yes