Senior Data Scientist - LLM Agents & Infra (Cortex)

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 As a Senior Data Scientist, you will bridge the gap between high-level research and production-grade reliability. Your role is to design and build the "connective tissue" that allows autonomous agents to function in the wild. You will move beyond simple wrappers to architect systems that can handle the inherent uncertainty of AI, ensuring that our agentic products are not just "smart," but robust, observable, and capable of operating at enterprise scale. Key Responsibilities Design and implement the backbone for multi-agent systems to manage complex, non-linear workflows and autonomous decision-making. Build specialized infrastructure to handle dynamic AI environments where outputs are unpredictable, ensuring system stability through robust "guardrail" architectures and fallback logic. Implement advanced tracing and logging for agent "thought processes," enabling the team to debug complex multi-step reasoning chains in real-time production environments. Develop automated tools to identify, isolate, and replicate edge-case failures in agent behavior, transforming "black box" hallucinations into actionable engineering tickets. Establish sophisticated monitoring for production deployments, tracking not just uptime, but model decay, tool-calling accuracy, and semantic drift across millions of tokens. Qualifications Required Qualifications At least 2 years of experience in high-growth software environments with a proven track record of building, shipping and monitoring complex products to thousands of users. At least 2 (additional) years of experience developing and deploying state-of-the-art AI-powered products at scale. Hands-on experience working with both proprietary APIs and SOTA open-source models Agentic experience building and maintaining LLM-powered systems that go beyond chat, specifically focusing on autonomous tool-calling, RAG, and reasoning loops. BSc in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering or a related technical field. Preferred Qualifications Experience with specialized AI observability platforms (e.g., LangSmith) for debugging non-deterministic agent traces. MSc in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering or a related technical field. Background in the cybersecurity domain. Demonstrated contributions to the open-source community (e.g., LangChain, HuggingFace, or a significant personal Git portfolio). 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.