Principal Machine Learning Engineer (Prisma AIRS) - NetSec

About the job

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

The Team

Engineering - Our Engineering team is at the core of our products and connected directly to the mission of preventing cyberattacks. We are constantly innovating and challenging the way we, and the industry, think about cybersecurity. Our engineers don't shy away from building products to solve problems no one has pursued before.

Key Responsibilities

- Lead SLM tuning initiatives for low-latency, highly accurate edge-cloud security tasks.

- Drive advanced data classification strategies using ML, NLP, and deep learning.

- Extract complex threat patterns from massive structured and unstructured datasets.

- Partner with product, security, and cloud engineering teams as a technical leader.

- Integrate machine learning solutions seamlessly into scalable production systems.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

- MS or PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related field.

- 14+ years of software engineering industry experience, including 3+ years in ML, NLP, or AI systems.

- Deep programming expertise in Python and deep learning frameworks like PyTorch or TensorFlow.

- Proven experience working directly with LLMs/SLMs, advanced prompt engineering, and fine-tuning techniques.

- Strong background in building and scaling auto-classification and anomaly detection models on massive datasets.

Preferred Qualifications

- Demonstrated knowledge of cybersecurity concepts and AI safety vulnerabilities like prompt injection defense and AI red-teaming.

- Familiarity with DistilBERT and other open-source classification models.

- Experience with large, graph-based datasets and processing techniques.

- Expertise in distributed cloud systems (GCP or AWS) and deploying ML inference pipelines at scale.

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? No. Please note that we will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.