Distinguished Architect, AI Platform

Company Description

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks® everything starts and ends with our mission:

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.
Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. We are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are done, and we’re looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of cybersecurity as we are.

Who We Are

We take our mission of protecting the digital way of life seriously. We are relentless in protecting our customers and we believe that the unique ideas of every member of our team contributes to our collective success. Our values were crowdsourced by employees and are brought to life through each of us everyday - from disruptive innovation and collaboration, to execution. From showing up for each other with integrity to creating an environment where we all feel included.

As a member of our team, you will be shaping the future of cybersecurity. We work fast, value ongoing learning, and we respect each employee as a unique individual. Knowing we all have different needs, our development and personal wellbeing programs are designed to give you choice in how you are supported. This includes our FLEXBenefits wellbeing spending account with over 1,000 eligible items selected by employees, our mental and financial health resources, and our personalized learning opportunities - just to name a few!

At Palo Alto Networks, we believe in the power of collaboration and value in-person interactions. This is why our employees generally work full time from our office with flexibility offered where needed. This setup fosters casual conversations, problem-solving, and trusted relationships. Our goal is to create an environment where we all win with precision.

Job Description

Your Career

As a Distinguished Architect for Enterprise AI Platform, you will be driving the design, implementation, scaling, and evangelism of the end-to-end AI platform that will be used across IT  and Enterprise business functions (Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR, Legal, etc).

This crucial role operates where AI innovation, top-tier engineering, and significant business outcomes converge. The platform will enable widespread AI development, supporting both code-based as well as low-code/no-code approaches, to accelerate the journey from concept to large-scale deployment of AI assistants, applications, and agents.

Given the fast pace of AI innovation, the platform will be designed for extensibility and flexibility to allow plug-and-play of emerging protocols (such as A2A, MCP),  SDKs, frameworks, agent tools. You will be designing for performance, reliability, security, rapid experimentation, and developer friendliness. You will partner with executive leadership, data science teams, engineering, and product stakeholders to translate complex business use-cases into scalable, production-grade AI solutions—positioning the AI platform as a foundational capability across the organization.

Your Impact

• Enterprise AI Platform Vision: Define and lead the long-term architectural strategy for AI/ML across the organization, aligning with enterprise goals and emerging technology trends.

• End-to-End System Design: Architect large-scale, distributed AI/ML systems including traditional and GenAI model development, deployment patterns, Gen AI UX patterns, RBAC and fine-grained access control, real-time inference systems.

• Technology and Platform Strategy: Drive selection of AI tools, frameworks, cloud solutions, and hybrid infrastructure that align with business and engineering needs.

• Architectural Governance: Establish design standards, patterns, and review frameworks that ensure scalable and secure development of AI assistants, agents, apps across teams.

• Cross-Functional Leadership: Collaborate with Data Scientists, ML Engineers, Data Engineers, and Product and IT leaders to ensure architectural decisions are feasible, cost-effective, and aligned with business needs.

• Security & Responsible AI: Lead the conversation on responsible AI, ensuring systems comply with responsible AI, data governance, privacy laws, security policies, and ethical AI frameworks.

• Technical Mentorship: Inspire and mentor senior engineering talent across the company. Promote architectural excellence, innovation, and hands-on experimentation.

• Innovation Leadership: Actively learn and incorporate advances in Agents, GenAI, LLMs, AIOps, and scalable AI architectures. Bring emerging innovations into production through POCs and long-term architectural evolution.

Qualifications

Your Experience 

• 15+ years in software engineering, distributed systems, or enterprise architecture, including 7+ years leading AI/ML architecture at scale.

• Proven expertise in designing complex, enterprise-grade AI/ML platforms, ideally across multiple domains (e.g., customer support, finance, sales).

• Deep knowledge of AI innovations and practical understanding of the full AI lifecycle for developing assistants, agents, apps.

• Leadership in building production-ready AI compound AI systems including feature engineering, RAGs, model training and eval, validation, deployment, and monitoring.

• Extensive experience with distributed systems architecture, streaming data platforms, data lakes, and real-time decision engines.

• Strong communication skills with a track record of influencing across VP+ and cross-org stakeholders.

• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field. PhD a plus.

Additional Information

The Team

To stay ahead of the curve, it’s critical to know where the curve is, and how to anticipate the changes we’re facing. For the fastest-growing cybersecurity company, the curve is the evolution of cyberattacks and the products and services that proactively address them.

You will be part of a growing, passionate, and dynamic team with an opportunity to work on challenging and exciting projects — centered on what we believe is one of the most significant mission statements in the world. We also strive to be the most people-centric company ever! That means we’re constantly working to make your experience amazing, and you are part of the team breaking boundaries of what the workplace can be!
 

Our Commitment

We’re problem solvers that 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.

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 between $0 - $0/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.

Our Commitment

We’re problem solvers that 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