Senior Principal Data Scientist LLM Agents (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 passionate about harnessing cutting-edge data science techniques to protect the world from cyber threats Do you thrive in the dynamic world of cybersecurity If so we invite you to join our innovative and forward-thinking team at Palo Alto Networks where youll have the opportunity to shape the future of cybersecurity and impact millions of customers.

As a Senior Principal Data Scientist you will be a technical leader and hands-on architect bridging the worlds of advanced data science robust software engineering and next-generation AI. You will bring a deep diverse background in classical machine learning algorithms alongside cutting-edge LLM agent architectures to build resilient production-grade defense techniques against cyber-villains. Operating as a premier technical authority you will drive the vision design and large-scale development of our groundbreaking Agentix LLM-based security solutions that block attacks even before they begin.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as a hands-on technical compass for a diverse elite product-oriented research team pioneering state-of-the-art technologies and setting the engineering standards for AI/ML excellence across the organization.

• Design implement and optimize robust Agentic LLM solutions and multi-agent workflows engineered to autonomously counter modern sophisticated cyber threats.

• Oversee and actively contribute to the entire end-to-end lifecycle moving seamlessly from ambiguous research concepts and POCs to high-throughput low-latency production deployments.

• Build and enforce comprehensive frameworks for continuous real-time monitoring evaluation and guardrails to track model drift latency and agent behavior in production environments.

• Decompose highly complex multi-layered algorithmic problems into actionable technical roadmaps and strategic insights for both deeply technical engineers and executive business stakeholders.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• A proven track record as an experienced architect who leads by example capable of writing core production-critical code conducting rigorous architecture reviews and mentoring senior technical staff.

• At least 3 years of hands-on experience building scaling and optimizing Agentic LLM systems. This includes deep familiarity with common frameworks (e.g. LangChain LangGraph AutoGen) and a sophisticated understanding of tool-use optimization memory management and deterministic behavioral alignment.

• At least 5 additional years of deep experience in data science with expert-level command of classical machine learning algorithms applied to complex real-world data landscapes.

• At least 5 additional years of experience as a software engineer with high proficiency in Python and querying languages. You possess deep knowledge of software design patterns concurrency CI/CD pipelines and writing clean scalable maintainable code.

• BSc in Machine Learning Computer Science Electrical Engineering Physics Statistics Applied Mathematics or a related field from a top university. An advanced degree is highly preferred.

• Demonstrated expertise in deploying and operating ML/LLM workloads at enterprise scale. You have a comprehensive understanding of containerization (Docker Kubernetes) high-throughput data pipelines and proactive system monitoring.

• Exceptional ability to run end-to-end research-to-production initiatives showcasing an analytical mindset capable of translating raw data into highly accurate real-time defensive actions.

• Extensive hands-on experience utilizing fine-tuning and optimizing open-source generative AI frameworks and libraries (e.g. Hugging Face PyTorch vLLM DeepSpeed) to build and deploy high-performance models.

• Proven experience architecting data solutions and working within major cloud and big data ecosystems (e.g. GCP AWS Snowflake) to ingest process and analyze high-velocity petabyte-scale datasets.

• Outstanding communication and presentation skills with a demonstrated ability to align cross-functional engineering product and research teams toward unified technical goals.

Preferred Qualifications

• MSc/PhD in Machine Learning Computer Science Electrical Engineering Physics Statistics Applied Mathematics or a related field from a top university.

• Background in the cybersecurity domain

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.