Senior Manager, AI & Data Solutions Engineering

Our Mission 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 We are seeking an exceptional, forward-thinking Group Manager for our AI & Data Solutions Engineering team, to build and lead our centralized AI and Data Solutions organization. In this high-visibility leadership role, you will head a multi-disciplinary R&D group comprising Data Engineering, MLOps, and Data & AI Architecture teams. You will own the foundational data platforms, operational machine learning lifecycle (MLOps), and enterprise-grade AI architectural patterns that power next-generation security intelligence, Agentic workflows, and predictive cyber defenses across Palo Alto Networks products. As a manager of managers and technical vision holder, you will bridge cutting-edge AI research and robust enterprise-scale software engineering, translating complex business objectives into production-grade AI platforms with measurable impact. Your Impact • Multi-Disciplinary Leadership: Lead, scale, and mentor a high-performing engineering group consisting of Data Engineers, MLOps Engineers, and Data/AI Architects; foster a culture of technical excellence, continuous learning, and rapid, disciplined execution. • End-to-End AI & Data Lifecycle: Own the end-to-end engineering lifecycle for our AI and data ecosystem—spanning large-scale data ingestion and transformation, feature pipelines, model fine-tuning and hosting, CI/CD for ML, inference serving, and real-time observability. • Architectural Strategy: Partner closely with Data and AI Architects to set the technical blueprint for generative AI, agentic frameworks, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and unified data lakehouse infrastructures across cloud environments. • MLOps & Operational Excellence: Direct the implementation of automated, secure, and cost-effective MLOps infrastructure (evaluation, guardrails, deployment, monitoring, drift detection, and feedback loops) to reliably scale models from proof-of-concept to global production. • Strategic Collaboration & Executive Alignment: Act as a critical technical partner to Product Management, Threat Research, Security Operations, and core engineering leadership, aligning group roadmaps with company-wide strategic bets. • AI Governance & Security: Champion security, data privacy, and ethical AI standards across all platforms, ensuring resilience against adversarial attacks and compliance with enterprise data policies. Qualifications Your Experience • Proven Leadership Track Record: 5+ years of direct engineering management experience, with at least 2–3 years managing other managers or multi-team groups (Group Manager, Director, or equivalent) within complex R&D environments. • Deep AI/ML & Data Engineering Depth: Broad, battle-tested technical expertise across modern AI domains (Generative AI, Agentic architectures, LLMs, NLP, traditional ML) combined with enterprise data engineering paradigms (distributed data processing, streaming, modern data lakehouse architectures). • MLOps & Platform Scale: Demonstrated success designing and operating production-scale MLOps platforms, CI/CD for AI, model registries, automated evaluation benchmarks, and low-latency inference serving. • Cloud Architecture & Infrastructure: Strong architectural fluency with major public cloud ecosystems (AWS, GCP, or Azure), containerization (Kubernetes, Docker), and distributed compute/data technologies (e.g., Spark, Kafka, Snowflake, Databricks, Ray). • Execution & Organizational Maturity: Proven ability to balance long-term architectural investments with short-term business deliverables, managing multiple parallel workstreams with transparent governance and numerical KPIs. • Education: B.Sc. or M.Sc. in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science, or an equivalent quantitative discipline. What Will Make You Stand Out • Direct domain experience in Cybersecurity, threat intelligence, or AI-powered automated security operations (SecOps). • Deep practical knowledge of modern GenAI frameworks and protocols (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex, Model Context Protocol (MCP), Vector databases, and fine-tuning techniques). • Hands-on familiarity with native cloud AI suites (e.g., AWS Bedrock/SageMaker, GCP Vertex AI, Azure OpenAI Service). • Active engagement with the broader AI engineering or research community (open-source contributions, technical publications, or speaking engagements). 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? No. Please note that we will not sponsor applicants for work visas for this position.