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# Principal/Sr. Principal AI Engineer - IT Business Applications

- **Company:** Palo Alto Networks
- **Location:** Santa Clara, CA, United States
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Salary:** $185,200.0 - $299,475.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** LangGraph Framework, Java (Programming Language), Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Artificial Intelligence, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Business Software, Cyber Security, Distributed Systems, Graph Database, Python (Programming Language), Machine Learning, Node.Js, Performance Tuning, Software Safety, Software Engineering, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, Large Language Models, Multi-Agent Systems, Agentic-AI, AI Platforms, Information Technology, Machine Learning Operations, Claude, GPT, Golang, Microservices
- **Published:** October 26, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.techcareers.com/job.asp?id=3466809483&tx=KL1717FFG&pt=1&aff=0B19D771-A501-4A5E-8338-2A822B784D54&utm_source=Job%20Feed&utm_medium=textkernel&utm_campaign=DE&utm_term=0B19D771-A501-4A5E-8338-2A822B784D54

## About the Role

* Principal: 12+ years of experience (or 8+ with a Master's degree).
 * Sr. Principal: 15+ years of experience (or 12+ with a Master's, 8+ with a PhD).
 * Technical Leadership: Track record of architecting and shipping complex, enterprise-grade distributed systems and full-stack AI platforms.
 * Technical Mastery: Expert Python capabilities plus mastery of additional core languages (Go, Java, Node.js). Deep expertise in cloud-native microservices (AWS/Azure/GCP) and distributed architecture.
 * AI & Agentic Systems: Proven mastery of LLMs (GPT-4, Llama 3, Claude), orchestration (LangChain, LangGraph), multi-agent architectures, and dynamic retrieval pipelines.
 * Domain & Strategy: Strong evaluation, and fine-tuning/RAG patterns.
 * Education: Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science or a related field.

## Description

We are hiring AI Engineers at the Principal and Senior Principal levels to join our IT Business Applications team. This group builds and operates the technology platforms that power Marketing, Sales, and the full Lead-to-Cash lifecycle.

This is a solutions engineering role, not a data science or ML research role. You will act as a hands-on technical leader who uses AI as building blocks-LLMs, agents, RAG, embeddings-to deliver production solutions that solve real business problems. You will partner directly with business and product stakeholders, translate requirements into scalable architecture, and own delivery end-to-end from design through production operations.

You will move beyond traditional software engineering to design intelligent, agentic workflows that revolutionize our Go-To-Market (GTM) and customer experience processes-ensuring our platforms are the most secure and efficient in the industry, directly improving operational revenue generation.

Your Impact

 * Strategic Architecture & Vision: Architect and govern the enterprise Proxy-First AI Ecosystem and unified API strategies, securing total model-vendor independence. Lead build-vs-buy decisions and establish standard architecture patterns across agentic, RAG, hybrid, and traditional systems.
 * Lead-to-Cash Transformation: Spearhead multi-system GenAI transformations across marketing, sales compensation, and quote-to-cash workflows. Architect advanced reasoning pipelines, knowledge graphs, and autonomous multi-agent networks.
 * Enterprise AI Observability & Optimization: Establish enterprise-wide "LLM as a Judge" evaluation standards and golden datasets. Design cost and performance optimization engines that dynamically route queries based on task complexity.
 * Security Architecture & Defense: Set security standards for AI safety, PII protection, and adversarial defense (keyword filtering, behavioral analysis, adversarial training).
 * Strategic Leadership & Influence: Lead high-ambiguity, cross-team technical initiatives. Communicate technical visions and business trade-offs directly to executive stakeholders while elevating engineering capabilities across the entire organization.