Staff ETAC Engineer

Company Description

This position must report to our offices in Plano, TX 3 days/week. 

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks® 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 Palo Alto Networks, 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

The Engineering TAC (ETAC) team is an exciting crossroads between Technical Assistance Center (TAC) and Engineering. This team is uniquely empowered to drive decisions and to be the thought leaders within the Global Customer Support organization at Palo Alto Networks. On any given day, members of the team may work with cutting–edge new hardware and software projects very early in the product life cycle, develop and deliver advanced technical training, assist a support engineer with a challenging customer issue, replicate a complex issue in our lab, evaluate customer network design, or help improve features for supportability and usability that shape the future of our products. Our roles are very hands–on and have a high impact on the company. 

We are a relatively small global team consisting of top performers with a support or engineering background. You'll enjoy networking and collaborating with key contacts outside your own area of expertise such as Product Management, QA, Engineering, Sales, and more, with a strong capability of detailing difficult technical issues to both non–technical and technical professionals. You will regularly not just participate in but lead technical discussions with cross–functional teams, creating an environment of transparency that ultimately leads to better products, better working environments, and better cybersecurity. You are a good candidate if you are the type of person who asks "why" as opposed to just accepting an answer. 

Your Impact

• Enable TAC support teams by providing deeper technical expertise and guidance for NetSec platforms (NGFW, Cloud NGFW, SASE) – This includes not only structured training throughout the year but also includes ad hoc sessions and Q&A in–person and remotely
• Work directly with Engineering on cutting–edge new product development – With your combined technical expertise in our state–of–the–art cybersecurity platform, and knowledge and skills learned from prior technical support experience, as an ETAC engineer one of your primary responsibilities is to define supportability and usability requirements for new products during the design phase as well as post GA via enhancement requests
• Develop and deliver expert level training materials for TAC support and Engineering teams – Training is a key component of the day–to–day success of support – An ETAC engineer has the highest level of expertise amongst support teams, and is responsible for staying up to date with technical details on Palo Alto Networks new products and industry in general – You will share those details with TAC via advanced technical documentation and training sessions
• Develop advanced troubleshooting focused tools and scripts to help solve complex customer issues and improve product supportability
• Work with TAC to provide expert–level technical support of customer issues that involve very complex network topologies, architectures, and security designs
• Own critical and executive level issues for LAN/WAN and NGFWs – You will work primarily with Customer Support and Engineering with the focus on assisting them with identifying and resolving customer issues – This usually means working with the TAC case owner and development engineering on a replication or verification and communicating updates
• Lead in Identifying problems and taking actions to fix them across support and product life cycles – Sometimes there are opportunities to catch a problem before it is escalated or becomes widespread – ETAC is positioned to identify or help in these unplanned projects that result in a better customer experience, and is also empowered to help implement enhancements and automations that save time and provide better security and usability
• Help drive and enable ML/AI related projects

Qualifications

Your Experience

• Minimum of 7 years of professional experience
• Technical Support or Development experience supporting enterprise customers with very complex LAN/WAN environments
• Deep understanding of TCP/IP and advanced knowledge of LAN/WAN technologies, expertise with general routing/switching, Routing protocols (e.g BGP, OSPF), branch and DataCenter Architectures
• Expertise with Remote Access VPN solutions, IPSEC, PKI & SSL
• Expertise with Cloud services and Infrastructure
• Familiarity with C, Python, or at least one scripting language – You're not applying to be a developer, but you should have some experience in automating moderately complex tasks
• Experience with Palo Alto Networks products is highly desired
• Understand how data packets get processed – Devices shouldn't be a "black box", you should know what is happening to a packet at different stages and how that can impact problems
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to deliver highly technical informative presentations – You're not being hired to answer phone calls from the queue, but you will speak with customers from time to time as well as to developers, sales engineers and the rest of your team
• Proficiency in creating technical documentation using applications such as Powerpoint/Google Slides or knowledge–base/intranet platforms such as Lumapps, Jive or Confluence
• Willing to work flexible times including occasional weekends and evenings – The ETAC team does not work on shifts – However, some critical situations could call for after–hours activities as well as weekend on–call

Additional Information

The Team

Our Customer Support team is critical to our success and mission. As part of this team, you enable customer success by providing support to clients after they have purchased our products. Our dedication to our customers doesn't stop once they sign-it evolves. As threats and technology change, we stay in step to accomplish our mission.

You'll be involved in implementing new products, transitioning from old products to new, and fixing integrations and critical issues as they are raised-in fact, you'll seek them out to ensure our clients are safely supported. We fix and identify technical problems with a pointed focus on providing the best customer support in the industry.

Compensation Disclosure

The compensation offered for this position will depend on qualifications, experience, and work location. For candidates who receive an offer at the posted level, the starting base salary (for non-sales roles) or base salary + commission target (for sales/commissioned roles) is expected to be between $126000 - $204500/YR. The offered compensation may also include restricted stock units and a bonus. A description of our employee benefits may be found here.

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.

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.