Sr Staff Engineer Software (Directory Services)

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.

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.

We are looking for a visionary Senior Staff Software Engineer to lead the technical strategy, multi-year architecture, and global engineering vision for our Identity Directory Service and User Management platform. As a principal technical authority, you will use AWS architecture, AWS CDK, and .NET to design next-generation cybersecurity and identity management capabilities. You will influence cross-organizational tech decisions, collaborate with group leaders and chief architects, and set the benchmark for resilience, security, and global cloud scale across multiple engineering teams.

Strategic Technical Vision: Define the long-term technical roadmap, system design patterns, and architectural evolution for global identity services across the enterprise. Cross-Organizational Influence: Partner closely with group Leadership, Chief Security Architects, and Product Directors to align business strategy with engineering execution. High-Impact Architecture: Solve the hardest technical, security, and scalability challenges across cloud ecosystems, distributed databases, and high-availability identity backbones. Technical Excellence & Culture: Establish engineering culture, architectural standards, and security paradigms across multiple development teams and product lines. Tech Pioneer: Evaluate next-gen cloud capabilities, security mechanisms, and AI/ML integrations to maintain industry leadership. Your Experience & Qualifications Education/Background: Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. in Computer Science or a related technical field / IDF elite technology unit alumni.

12–15+ years of software engineering experience, including significant experience leading large-scale system architecture for global enterprise SaaS platforms. Core Competencies: Recognized technical leader with a track record of driving multi-system cloud initiatives to completion. Mastery in modern backend technologies (.NET / C#, Java, Go, or Python) and distributed system design patterns. Deep knowledge of fault tolerance, zero-trust security paradigms, global data residency, and enterprise scalability. Exceptional ability to communicate complex architecture simply to stakeholders ranging from junior developers to engineering managers Build end-to-end features using models from providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, or open-source ecosystems.

Recognized expertise in identity protocols (SAML, OAuth2, OIDC, SCIM, LDAP), zero-trust architecture, and identity threat surface reduction. Expert-level mastery of AWS platforms, multi-region cloud deployment models, and event-driven architectures using AWS CDK and .NET. Proven experience establishing technical standards and architectural review processes for multi-team