STEM OPT Sr Staff Machine Learning Engineer Jobs

INTRODUCTION

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

Your Impact

Key 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.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required Qualifications

• MS or Ph.D. in Computer Science or a related field, with a focus on Machine Learning, and 4+ years of industry experience delivering ML systems in production environments.
• 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.
• 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).

Preferred Qualifications

• 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 website content understanding, website classifications, security, or large-scale internet data is a strong plus.
• Familiarity with relational and NoSQL data stores such as MySQL, MongoDB, or similar systems.
• Experience applying LLMs and agentic systems in security-sensitive or high-precision domains is a strong plus.

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.

• $141,000.00 - $228,075.00/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

LOCATION

Santa Clara, California, United States