Distinguished AIML Architect (Cortex)

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks were united by a shared missionto 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 youre ready to do the most meaningful work of your career alongside people who are just as passionate as you are youre 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!

Job Summary

Are you a master of the AI lifecycle who can thrive at the intersection of deep learning research cybersecurity and large-scale production systems Do you possess the rare ability to jump into a complex technical crisis diagnose a bottleneck in a Small Language Model (SLM) and lead a team to a production-ready solution

As a Distinguished AI/ML Architect you will be the premier technical authority across the Cortex AI/ML organization. You will serve as the force multiplier for multiple AI & ML teams ensuring that our AI strategy - from endpoint-deployed DL/ML models to cloud-scale agentic products - is executed with world-class precision. You will operate as the primary technical architect and hands-on leader for our most ambitious and difficult initiatives.

Key Responsibilities

• Operate at the forefront of AI and cybersecurity leveraging vast datasets to design and deploy innovative defense mechanisms.

• Provide horizontal technical leadership across endpoint cloud and agentic AI teams to ensure architectural excellence.

• Oversee the design and deployment of different model architectures to guarantee scalability and high-performance standards.

• Spearhead high-difficulty initiatives and new research frontiers moving them from ambiguity to production.

• Resolve complex technical bottlenecks across the stack optimizing model efficiency and runtime performance.

• Align research and engineering efforts to transform advanced models into robust production-grade products.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• 10 years of hands-on experience delivering production-grade machine learning and deep learning projects at scale.

• Proven ability to own the entire lifecycle of a projecttaking ambiguous ideas from initial research through to successful production deployment.

• Extensive experience designing training and fine-tuning complex models including SLMs and LLMs tailored to specific proprietary datasets.

• Track record of shipping diverse models to production across both resource-constrained endpoints and high-throughput cloud environments.

• Deep expertise in building and optimizing agentic AI systems including RAG architectures and autonomous workflows.

• Demonstrated ability to lead technical strategy ensuring research code is scalable reliable and production-ready.

• Advanced degree (MSc or PhD) in Computer Science Machine Learning Physics Mathematics or a related quantitative field.

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to articulate complex architectural decisions to both technical teams and leadership.

Preferred Qualifications

• Background in the cybersecurity domain specifically in developing AI/ML models to detect and prevent cyber attacks.

• Deep cybersecurity expertise in non-AI fields such as vulnerability research reverse engineering or low-level security systems development.

• Experience with low-level performance engineering including model quantization pruning and runtime frameworks like ONNX or TensorRT.

Our Commitment

Were trailblazers that dream big take risks and challenge cybersecuritys status quo. Its simple: we cant 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 .

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.