Principal Devops Engineer Jobs at Palo Alto Networks with Visa Sponsorship

Location: Santa Clara, California, United States

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

We are seeking a highly experienced and visionary Principal DevOps Engineer to lead the design, implementation, and scaling of our core infrastructure and deployment pipelines. As a technical leader, you will be instrumental in bridging the gap between software development and IT operations, ensuring high availability, robust security, and seamless continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD). You will champion automation, embed security practices into our development lifecycle, and mentor junior engineers while driving our technical strategy forward.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect & Scale Infrastructure: Design, deploy, and maintain highly available and resilient containerized infrastructure utilizing Kubernetes or Red Hat OpenShift.
• Version Control Leadership: Establish and enforce advanced Git workflows, optimal branching strategies (e.g., GitFlow, trunk-based development), and governance policies across enterprise GitLab or Bitbucket environments.
• CI/CD Leadership: Own and continuously improve enterprise-scale CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, integrating seamlessly with our source control repositories to ensure fast, reliable, and automated software delivery.
• DevSecOps Integration: Champion secure coding practices by integrating and managing static analysis (SAST) tools, specifically Coverity, directly into the build pipelines to catch vulnerabilities early.
• Systems Engineering & Administration: Serve as the subject matter expert for Linux administration, performance tuning, and capacity planning across all environments.
• Network Operations: Lead advanced network troubleshooting, managing configurations, firewalls, load balancing, and resolving complex connectivity issues across distributed systems.
• Automation & Tooling: Write robust, scalable automation scripts and internal tooling using Python to eliminate manual toil and optimize system performance.
• Mentorship & Strategy: Act as a technical mentor to the broader engineering team, establish best practices for DevOps, and guide the architectural direction of our platform.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Experience: 8+ years of proven experience in DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or Systems Engineering, with a track record of operating at a senior or principal level.
• AI Infrastructure & MLOps: Direct experience in designing, implementing, and optimizing infrastructure specifically for AI application development and machine learning operations (MLOps), including GPU orchestration, managing data pipelines, and serving AI models (e.g., Large Language Models) in production.
• Version Control Mastery: Deep expertise in advanced Git operations (complex merges, interactive rebasing, history management) and enterprise repository administration using GitLab or Bitbucket.
• Container Orchestration: Deep expertise in deploying and managing microservices using OpenShift or Kubernetes in production environments.
• CI/CD Mastery: Extensive hands-on experience building complex, automated pipelines using Jenkins.

• Systems & Networking:

• Advanced Linux administration skills (Red Hat, Ubuntu, CentOS, etc.).

• Strong network troubleshooting skills, with a deep understanding of TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP/S, routing, and network security protocols.

• Security/Code Analysis: Hands-on experience integrating static code analysis and security testing into automated workflows, with specific expertise in Coverity (or similar enterprise SAST tools).

• Programming: Strong proficiency in Python for scripting, automation, and API integrations.
• Problem Solving: Exceptional analytical skills with the ability to troubleshoot complex, inter-dependent platform issues during critical incidents.

Preferred Qualifications (Optional)

• Experience migrating repositories or CI/CD pipelines between major platforms (e.g., Bitbucket to GitLab, Jenkins to GitLab CI).
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform or Ansible.
• AI Tooling & Automation: Demonstrated ability to leverage AI/Machine Learning techniques (including Large Language Models (LLM), AI agents, and Claude code) to develop, automate, or improve core infrastructure and DevOps tooling (e.g., for code generation, troubleshooting, or runbook automation).
• Experience operating within major public cloud providers (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Familiarity with modern observability and monitoring stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, ELK).
• Proven ability to integrate with existing toolchains to boost developer productivity, coupled with previous involvement in open-source projects.

Compensation Disclosure

The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, experience, and work location. For candidates who receive an offer at the posted level, the starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/commissioned roles) is expected to be the annual range listed below. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.

$151,600.00 - $245,300.00/yr

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?: Yes