Principal Product Manager - Synthetic Monitoring / Digital Experience Monitoring

Compensation context

This range is the expected starting base salary for this non-sales role. Restricted stock units (RSUs) and a bonus may be added.

Our Mission

Palo Alto Networks® describes one shared goal: keeping digital life safe. The company says it works where new ideas meet real results, tackling practical problems with advanced tools and fresh thinking. It says every person is heard and every suggestion matters, and it invites people who want career-defining work next to equally committed colleagues to apply.

Who We Are

To stay the security partner customers pick first, the company says it has to lead the way and set the direction for the industry. Staff pursue that daily through five stated values (Integrity, Inclusion, Collaboration, Disruption, and Execution). AI is built into how the company operates and is used to boost what each person can achieve. People who enjoy hard, real-world problems and want to brainstorm alongside top talent are encouraged to join.

The posting states the position is remote and that being apart does not limit impact. Hybrid teams work together across regions to tackle large problems, stay near customers, and grow. The culture is described as built on trust, accountability, and shared wins, with work that genuinely counts.

Job Summary

About our team:

Cortex XCOR is the Palo Alto Networks observability platform tuned for container environments. The company says it lowers costs, cuts data complexity by as much as 89%, and speeds up fixes for leading firms such as DoorDash, Affirm, and Zillow.

XCOR Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) ties what end users experience to the backend observability beneath it, answering something infrastructure dashboards cannot: are users actually having a good time? A slow service is no longer just a flat chart; it shows up as a slow checkout journey, traced from the affected user through the service and deploy to the responsible query. By merging synthetic and real-user data with the wider service stack, XCOR lets everyone from SREs to executives follow user-facing problems from symptom to root cause.

DEM has two halves. Real user monitoring shows what customers actually went through on their own device, network, and browser at the moment that counted. Synthetic monitoring checks on purpose and on a schedule, from where customers are located, whether the most important journeys work right now, even if nobody is using them at that moment.

Job Summary

The company is hiring a Principal Product Manager who will own synthetic monitoring in Cortex XCOR. You turn what SREs and front-end developers need to test (click-paths in a browser, API journeys with several steps, and lower-level protocol checks) into one product that can be written as code and run worldwide or inside customer networks.

Working with the RUM team, you bring synthetic and real-user data together so synthetic failures line up with the user groups they affect.

It is an early-stage build, and you make the core calls that define the product.

Qualifications

Key Responsibilities

• Run first-hand research with platform teams, SREs, and front-end developers to learn how they test journeys today and where it hurts.
• Keep regular contact with design partners, field teams, and customers through interviews and discovery calls.
• Join sales calls where synthetic coverage matters and collect feedback to guide roadmap priorities.
• Work with engineers and technical stakeholders to define, scope, and ship a single coherent product.
• Build on the XCOR observability platform so synthetic results land as OpenTelemetry-native signals that line up with the logs, metrics, and traces teams already use.
• Own how tests run: scheduling, run locations, what customers pay for, and how they stay in control.
• Team up with RUM product colleagues so real-user and synthetic data come together in shared customer workflows.
• Define KPIs that state and track the value and impact intended for customers.
• Own the whole roadmap: create it, order it, share it, and keep the team and business aligned as it changes.
• Lead across teams so features and workflows feel consistent across the platform.
• Collaborate with product marketing on go-to-market plans, messaging, and positioning.

What you will achieve

You arrive while the product is still being shaped. That is why the role exists, and it sets the speed.

In the first 30 days you study the market, join design discussions, meet customers, and find key gaps so you can take ownership of product strategy.

By six months you have built a competitive offering, set key metrics, closed major competitive gaps, and given the team an ordered plan to build against.

It fits someone who enjoys starting from a blank page on a tight timeline and can hold firm views about a product that is not built yet.

Qualifications

You'll need:

• 10+ years as a product manager with deep enterprise software knowledge.
• Background in developer infrastructure, testing, or monitoring products, for example CI/CD tools, API testing, browser-based end-to-end testing, or synthetic monitoring.
• Practical understanding of how modern web apps are tested from start to finish: automated browsers (Cypress, Selenium, Playwright), HTTP and API tests, and the protocols below them (TLS, TCP, DNS).
• Has taken a product from zero to one
• The confidence to own the room: you present to customer leadership and the company's own executives and field the tough questions.
• Has shipped using agile methods and fast feedback cycles.
• Cares intensely about getting small details right.
• Shows skill using AI across the product development lifecycle, from writing documents to building prototypes, while keeping your own thinking clearly reflected. Agents are meant to cut busywork, not replace critical thinking.

Helpful, not required:

• Knows observability broadly and OpenTelemetry in particular, including how telemetry is gathered, linked, and stored.
• Has built AI-native products and knows how to build or maintain MCP servers.
• Knows the digital experience monitoring space and how synthetic and real-user data complement each other: user journeys, Core Web Vitals, JavaScript exceptions, and what each can and cannot reveal.
• At ease working with infrastructure-as-code and test-as-code, and with the CI/CD pipelines that run them for engineering teams.
• Has built and run SaaS, including the per-unit economics of customer workloads.
• Background in design-led product development methods and best practice

Location

US - Remote

Compensation Disclosure

What is paid depends on the candidate's qualifications and experience and on where they work. If the offer is made at the advertised level, the range shown below is the expected starting base for non-sales jobs, or base plus commission target for commissioned sales jobs. Restricted stock units (RSUs) and a bonus may be added, and the posting links to a description of benefits.

Range: $176,800 to $286,000 a year

Our Commitment

The company calls itself a group of trailblazers who aim high, take chances, and push back on the usual way cybersecurity is done. It says diverse teams working together are essential to its mission.

The company offers reasonable accommodations to qualified people with disabilities. Anyone needing help or an accommodation because of a disability or special need can email accommodations@paloaltonetworks.com.

The company states it offers equal employment opportunity and values a diverse workplace. Every qualified applicant is considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, ancestry, national origin, marital status, family or medical care leave, genetic information, medical condition, political affiliation, protected veteran status, physical or mental disability, or any other characteristic the law protects.

Applicant information is kept private in line with EEO guidance.

Immigration sponsorship: available (Yes)

Application process

Submit your application through NorthStar. Employer screening may follow after submission.