Senior Staff Data Scientist

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 a versatile Senior Staff Data Scientist to join our team and help shape the future of our business operations. This role is a unique hybrid of classical machine learning and applied AI. You will tackle diverse and impactful projects, from building predictive models that drive key business decisions to characterizing and optimizing the performance of our emerging AI agentic systems.

You are an entrepreneurial problem-solver who thrives in ambiguous environments and enjoys bridging the gap between technical execution and business strategy. In this role, you will act as both a builder, developing and deploying ML models, and a strategic partner, consulting with business teams to unlock new opportunities with data and AI. If you are passionate about wearing multiple hats, working in a fast-paced setting, and delivering high-quality, impactful work, we want to hear from you.

This is an in-office role 3 days/week in our HQ, Santa Clara, CA.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop & Deploy Classical ML Models:

Own the end-to-end lifecycle of machine learning projects. You'll build and productionize sophisticated models for critical business areas such as customer churn prediction, supply chain and finance forecasting. •

Required Qualifications

• Education & Experience:Bachelor's degree with 5+ years of related experience; OR Master's degree with 3+ years of related experience; OR PhD in a quantitative field (Computer Science, AI, Statistics, Physics, etc.) with 1+ years of experience (academic research applies).
• Strong foundation in statistics and probability theory and commonly used data science algorithms.
• Proven hands-on experience building and deploying machine learning models in a production environment.
• Expert-level programming skills in Python and familiarity with core data science and machine learning libraries (e.g., Scikit-learn, Pandas, PyTorch/TensorFlow, XGBoost).
• A solid command of SQL for complex querying and data manipulation.
• Proven ability to work autonomously, navigate ambiguity, and drive projects from concept to completion.
• Prior experience developing dashboards in Tableau/Looker or similar data viz platform.

• Direct experience with generative AI, including hands-on work with LLMs and frameworks like LangChain, LlamaIndex, or the Hugging Face ecosystem.
• Experience in evaluating and optimizing the performance of AI systems or agents.
• Demonstrated expertise in specialized modeling domains such as causal inference, time-series analysis, or mix modeling.