Principal Consultant, AI, Proactive Services (Unit 42) – Remote Full-time

Company Description

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!

Job Description

Your Career

The Principal Consultant, Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Proactive Services is focused on leading engagements on our AI team across a comprehensive portfolio of clients. The individual will assess security risk in the development and use of AI models and tools across multiple frameworks and act as a technical key team member in client engagements. They will be the client’s advocate for cybersecurity risk management and provide expert recommendations to enhance their AI security posture.

Your Impact

• Conduct comprehensive security assessments of AI systems and tools using frameworks such as:
  • MITRE ATLAS for adversarial tactics and techniques.
  • OWASP Top 10 for LLMs to identify vulnerabilities in AI/ML models.
  • NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF) for risk analysis and mitigation.
• Develop and execute assessment plans tailored to foundational models, base models, and SaaS-based AI tools.
• Analyze model architectures, training data pipelines, and deployment environments to identify potential security gaps and vulnerabilities.
• Provide expert guidance on securing AI systems, including:
  • Adversarial ML defenses.
  • Data poisoning prevention.
  • Privacy-preserving AI techniques (e.g., differential privacy).
• Evaluate compliance with regulatory requirements and standards (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, or emerging AI-specific regulations).
• Collaborate with the client’s cross-functional teams, conducting stakeholder interviews, interactive workshops, and meetings with technical teams (data scientists, developers, DevOps engineers) and leadership teams to ensure a thorough understanding of system architecture, security requirements, and business objectives for the assessment.
• Stay up-to-date on the evolving threat landscape in AI and contribute to the development of innovative security solutions.Assisting Unit 42 Consulting Leadership in the development of Risk Management, Compliance, and Security standards within professional services
• Maintaining industry knowledge of and experience with cybersecurity best practices within theGovernance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) field to provide recommendations to proactively improve our client’s security posture and maturity
• Maintaining an understanding of the comprehensive threat intelligence landscape, key threat actors, MITRE ATT&CK TTPs, threat intelligence platforms, zero-day and other vulnerabilities, and other threat-led cybersecurity intelligence information
• Maintaining an understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms and security best practices as well as threat to foundational, base, and other AI models and tools
• Leading or supporting cybersecurity risk assessments, audits, program and policy maturation and development, incident response tabletop exercises, configuration reviews, breach readiness reviews, and expert witness cases in accordance with industry best practices, regulations, standards, and company policies and procedures
• Maintaining the ability to work across multiple frameworks and regulatory standards including, but not limited to, NIST, CIS 18, ISO, GDPR, CCPA, SOX, and HIPAA
• Managing the team, monitoring progress, tracking budget, mitigating risks, and ensuring key stakeholders are kept informed about progress and expected outcomes while defining potential impacts and creating an effective mitigation strategy for multiple projects at a given time
• Identifying security risks and vulnerabilities while eliminating cybersecurity threats via stakeholder interviews, documentation review, and deep-dive testing and control validation
• Evaluating client controls for compliance with legal, regulatory, privacy, policy, standards and security requirements
• Effectively documenting and communicating audit, assessment, or compliance results, findings, and recommendations to stakeholders
• Effectively communicating with external stakeholders in a professional manner
• Scoping new opportunities with prospective clients, including drafting statements of work and proposals
• Meeting travel requirements as needed to meet business demands (on average ~30%)

Qualifications

Your Experience

• 6-9+ years of experience performing information security and risk assessments based upon industry-accepted standards.
• Former professional services and consulting experience preferred
• Experience managing a team of consultants
• Experience with GRC tools, technology, and implementation
• Experience with security assessments/audits, drafting findings and recommendations, and prioritizing recommendations via quantitative risk scoring
• Experience with securing AI systems within cloud environments (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud).
• Experience with the lifecycle management of AI/ML models, including development, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, particularly in conveying complex technical information to non-technical stakeholders.
• Demonstrate a track record in strengthening existing and developing new client relationships
• Knowledge of computer forensic tools, technologies and methods
• Bachelor’s Degree in Information Security, Computer Science, Digital Forensics, Cyber Security or equivalent years of professional experience to meet job requirements and expectations

Additional Information

The Team

Unit 42 Consulting is Palo Alto Network’s security advisory team. Our vision is to create a more secure digital world by providing the highest quality incident response, risk management, and digital forensic services to clients of all sizes. Our team is composed of recognized experts and incident responders with deep technical expertise and experience in investigations, data breach response, digital forensics, and information security. With a highly successful track record of delivering mission-critical cybersecurity solutions, we are experienced in working quickly to provide an effective incident response, attack readiness, and remediation plans with a focus on providing long-term support to improve our clients’ security posture.

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 $151000 – $208000/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.