Director of AI Strategy - Engineering Productivity

Zscaler • San Jose, CA

9h • Hybrid

About The Position

Zscaler accelerates digital transformation by leveraging its cloud-native Zero Trust Exchange platform, powered by the world’s largest security data lake, to protect customers from cyberattacks and data loss. The company fosters an AI-forward culture, valuing impact, trust, innovation, transparency, and high-performing teams focused on customer obsession, collaboration, ownership, and accountability. Zscaler seeks individuals driven by purpose to help secure the AI age. The Director of AI Strategy - Engineering Productivity will join the Engineering Operations team, a hybrid role based in San Jose, CA, reporting to the Senior Director, Technical Program Management, Zero Trust Exchange. This role involves defining and championing the company's AI strategy for engineering productivity, including evaluating, securing, and integrating AI-driven developer tools and CI/CD pipeline enhancements. The goal is to drive widespread engineering efficiency by unifying enterprise governance, establishing measurable business metrics, and managing a structured budget for AI adoption.

Requirements

• Proven experience defining and executing an AI strategy specifically focused on engineering productivity
• Deep technical expertise in modern software development lifecycles (SDLC) with hands-on experience evolving CI/CD pipelines using AI agents
• Demonstrated experience navigating enterprise security protocols and partnering with InfoSec teams to deploy AI models safely within an enterprise environment
• Strong strategic thinking and stakeholder management skills with a proven ability to influence leadership and drive a unified master plan across multiple teams

Nice To Haves

• Strong foundational background in DevOps or Platform Engineering
• Experience establishing business-oriented metrics to measure AI ROI and managing dedicated budgets for engineering productivity tools

Responsibilities

• Define and lead the Enterprise AI Strategy by developing a unified engineering governance model to standardize AI workflows, prompting techniques, and QA frameworks
• Lead the hands-on evaluation, selection, and rollout of AI developer tools while driving consensus to consolidate vendors and manage a dedicated productivity budget
• Architect AI-enhanced CI/CD pipelines by integrating AI agents and advanced automation while establishing business-oriented metrics to measure tangible impact
• Partner cross-functionally with Security and IT teams to ensure all AI tools are deployed safely, addressing data privacy and protecting proprietary codebases
• Exercise cross-functional influence to build consensus around the AI roadmap, moving the company from isolated experimentation into a structured master plan

Benefits

• Various health plans
• Time off plans for vacation and sick time
• Parental leave options
• Retirement options
• Education reimbursement
• In-office perks

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director
• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 1,001-5,000 employees