Palo Alto Networks · 1 day ago
Principal ML Engineer (NetSec)
Santa Clara, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
$205K/yr - $235K/yr
2+ years expPalo Alto Networks is a cybersecurity company dedicated to protecting the digital way of life. The Principal ML Engineer will build machine learning models and develop systems to analyze and categorize URLs, contributing to the next generation of security platforms.
Agentic AICloud SecurityCyber SecurityNetwork SecuritySecurity
Responsibilities
Design, build, and operate production machine learning systems that balance model quality, cost, latency, and reliability in a security-sensitive environment
Own the end-to-end lifecycle of ML and LLM components, from problem formulation and model development to production deployment, monitoring, and iterative improvement
Integrate ML and LLM-based services with backend systems and data pipelines, ensuring scalability, observability, and safe operation in production
Develop and maintain automated training, evaluation, and retraining pipelines, and build data analysis tools to continuously improve model performance as data and threats evolve
Partner closely with Product Managers and domain experts to translate product and security requirements into robust ML solutions with clear success metrics
Collaborate with software engineers and SREs on release planning, deployment strategies, monitoring, and incident response to ensure reliable and predictable production behavior
Qualification
Required
Strong problem solver with collaborative team player with clear communication skills, able to work effectively across engineering, product, and SRE teams
Solid foundation in Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and NLP, with hands-on experience using modern architectures such as transformer-based models and representation learning techniques
Practical experience applying Large Language Models (LLMs) to real-world problems, including text understanding, classification, extraction, summarization, or reasoning over large-scale and noisy data
Experience designing, implementing, and operating LLM-powered components in production, including prompt design, model adaptation or fine-tuning, evaluation, and cost/performance optimization
Familiarity with AI agent–based approaches, such as multi-step inference pipelines, tool-augmented LLM workflows, or systems that combine models, heuristics, and external signals to drive reliable decisions
Experience with MLOps / AIOps practices for operating ML and LLM systems in production, including model lifecycle management, monitoring, logging, alerting, retraining workflows, and debugging production issues
Understanding of model quality, robustness, and safety considerations, including evaluation methodologies, failure modes, and guardrails required for production ML systems in security-sensitive environments
Strong experience with ML frameworks, libraries, and tooling (e.g., PyTorch, Tensorflow, Keras, Scikit-learn, Kubeflow), and solid software engineering fundamentals
Ability to independently own ML features end-to-end, from problem formulation and system design to implementation, deployment, and iterative improvement in production
Proficient in Python, working knowledge of Java, Linux, and shell scripting
Experience building and operating services on cloud platforms (GCP and/or AWS) and in containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes)
Familiarity with relational and NoSQL data stores such as MySQL, MongoDB, or similar systems
MS or Ph.D. in Computer Science or a related field, with a focus on Machine Learning, and 2+ years of industry experience delivering ML systems in production environments
Preferred
Experience with website content understanding, website classifications, security, or large-scale internet data is a strong plus
Experience applying LLMs and agentic systems in security-sensitive or high-precision domains is a strong plus
Benefits
Restricted stock units
A bonus
Company
Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks is a cybersecurity company that offers cybersecurity solutions for organizations.
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
Palo Alto Networks has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (579)
2024 (482)
2023 (341)
2022 (452)
2021 (493)
2020 (235)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$65MKey Investors
Icon VenturesLehman HoldingsGlobespan Capital Partners
2012-07-20IPO
2008-11-03Series C· $10M
2008-08-18Series C· $27M
Leadership Team
Helmut Reisinger
CEO EMEA
Nikesh Arora
Chairman CEO
Recent News
Company data provided by crunchbase