Senior Principal Software Architect

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

Job Summary

Lead the architectural vision for the Mobile Engineering group, driving the strategy for enterprise mobile platforms, AI-native engineering, cloud-native backend services, reusable SDKs, identity security and developer platforms. This role serves as the highest technical authority for mobile engineering, partnering with executive leadership to define long-term technology strategy across products.

Key Responsibilities

- Define the multi-year architecture roadmap for the Mobile engineering group and govern architecture across all mobile initiatives.

- Architect reusable mobile platform capabilities including Authentication SDKs, Identity SDKs, Security SDKs, Shared UI Components, Design System, Analytics, Telemetry, Feature Flags, Offline Sync and Release Frameworks.

- Drive the evolution of enterprise mobile applications into modular, scalable platforms backed by cloud-native microservices.

- Lead AI-native engineering adoption including AI-assisted design, coding, testing, code reviews, documentation and Agentic SDLC practices.

- Partner with Platform Engineering to establish Internal Developer Platforms (IDP), golden paths, reusable CI/CD pipelines and developer experience standards.

- Provide technical leadership across Android, iOS, backend, cloud and security engineering teams.

- Establish architecture governance, technical standards and design review processes.

- Champion engineering excellence through observability, SRE, DORA metrics, Flow Metrics and operational excellence.

- Mentor Principal Engineers, Staff Engineers and senior technical leaders while influencing engineering strategy across business units.

- Represent the Mobile COE in executive architecture reviews and external technical forums.

- Improve engineering productivity through AI-native engineering and platform automation.

- Standardize architecture, security and operational excellence across all mobile products.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

- 18+ years of software engineering experience with at least 8 years in architecture leadership.

- Deep expertise in Android and iOS native development and enterprise mobile platform architecture.

- Extensive experience with cloud-native distributed systems, microservices and API ecosystems.

- Proven success leading cross-functional architecture initiatives across global organizations.

- Excellent communication, executive stakeholder management and technical mentorship skills.

Preferred Qualifications

- Identity Security, IAM or Cybersecurity domain expertise.

- Experience building enterprise mobile platforms or Mobile COEs.

- Platform Engineering, Internal Developer Platforms and Developer Experience initiatives.

- Enterprise SaaS and large-scale cloud-native architectures.

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.