Principal SRE (Cortex XDR XSIAM)

Company Description

Our Mission

At 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, 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

We are looking for a highly motivated Principal DevOps / Senior SRE Engineer to join the Cortex DevOps Production group at our India Development Center (IDC). In this role, you will work side by side with the Cortex Cyber Security Research Group to build, operate, and scale the production environment for our SaaS platform, deployed across tens of thousands of GCP projects and large-scale GKE clusters.

You will take end-to-end ownership of production reliability, ensuring that our services remain resilient, secure, and cost-optimized. This includes leading infrastructure automation, incident management, and on-call (L3) support, as well as driving post-incident analysis and MTTR reduction.

This is a hands-on leadership role where you will not only build scalable systems but also guide best practices across DevOps, SRE, and security.

More information about the Cortex product can be found here

Your Impact

• Take full end-to-end ownership of SaaS production environments deployed on GCP, ensuring scalability, reliability, security, and cost efficiency.
• Work with large-scale Kubernetes (GKE) clusters, while developing Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, HashiCorp tools) to orchestrate production and development environments.
• Lead incident management (L3 on-call) — plan and execute high-pressure production maintenance tasks, perform root cause analysis, and implement solutions to drive MTTR reduction.
• Build automation and self-healing tools for proactive remediation of known issues, CI/CD pipelines, and deployment processes.
• Secure production environments by integrating best-in-class security tools and practices, including both and other industry-leading technologies.
• Collaborate with development and research teams to enhance architecture, improve service reliability, and optimize performance.
• Continuously research and deploy AI/ML technologies to production, driving innovation and operational excellence.

Qualifications

Your Experience

• 10+ years as a DevOps/SRE Engineer (or similar role) with a strong passion for technology, reliability, and service excellence.
• Hands-on expertise in cloud platforms (GCP preferred), with proven ability to manage large-scale, multi-project, multi-cluster environments.
• Strong background in infrastructure automation and orchestration using Terraform, HashiCorp tools, and Infrastructure-as-Code practices.
• Proficiency in containerized and virtualized environments (Kubernetes, Docker) with advanced scaling strategies using HPA, Karpenter, or Keda with custom metrics.
• Solid experience in CI/CD and release automation (GitLab, ArgoCD, Jenkins), including configuration management and deployment pipelines.
• Programming skills in Python or Go with high proficiency in Linux systems.
• Knowledge of databases such as Cassandra, ScyllaDB, MemSQL, or MySQL (advantage).
• Strong expertise in incident response, RCA, and post-mortem analysis, driving MTTR reduction and operational resilience.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate with cross-functional research, security, and development teams, and work effectively with both internal and external stakeholders.
• Excellent communication, prioritization, and multitasking skills with a proven ability to grasp new technologies quickly and lead in high-scale production environments.

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 access technology and the products and services that dedicatedly address them. Our engineering team is at the core of our products – connected directly to the mission of preventing cyberattacks and enabling secure access to all on-prem and cloud applications. They are constantly innovating – challenging the way we, and the industry, think about Access and security. These engineers aren’t shy about building products to solve problems no one has pursued before. They define the industry, instead of waiting for directions. We need individuals who feel comfortable in ambiguity, excited by the prospect of challenge, and empowered by the unknown risks facing our everyday lives that are only enabled by a secure digital environment.

Our engineering team is provided with an unrivaled chance to create the products and practices that will support our company growth over the next decade, defining the cybersecurity industry as we know it. If you see the potential of how incredible people and products can transform a business, this is the team for you.   If the prospect of affecting tens of millions of people, enabling them to work remotely securely and easily in ways never done before, thrill you - you belong with us.

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

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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.