Principal Technical Marketing Engineer

Zscaler•San Jose, CA

5d•$171,500 - $245,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Zscaler is seeking a hands-on, self-starting Technical Marketing Engineer (TME) with deep networking expertise to drive technical enablement, customer validation, and field readiness for our next-generation Zero Trust Branch solutions. This is a hybrid role on-site three days a week in San Jose, reporting to the VP, Product Management. In this high-impact role, you will architect and maintain complex lab environments, lead hands-on Proof of Value (POV) customer engagements, and provide technical troubleshooting to resolve escalations. As the bridge between engineering and field teams, you will author comprehensive deployment guides, technical collateral, and test plans while delivering interactive training to systems engineers and partners. This is an ideal position for a practitioner who thrives on solving real-world enterprise networking challenges and accelerating customer adoption across distributed edge environments.

Requirements

Demonstrated curiosity and active exploration of AI tools, with a proven history of integrating new technologies to enhance daily workflows and augment problem-solving
5+ years of hands-on experience in technical marketing, solutions architecture, or advanced systems engineering with deep subject matter expertise in enterprise routing, switching, TCP/IP, L2/L3 network segmentation, and tunneling protocols (WireGuard, IPsec, VxLAN)
Proven track record of leading and winning hands-on customer Proof of Value (POV) pilots and executive architectural evaluations within complex enterprise and distributed edge networking environments
Hands-on proficiency in building and maintaining multi-vendor physical and virtual network lab topologies using bare-metal appliances, hypervisors (ESXi, KVM), and network emulation platforms (EVE-NG, GNS3)
Advanced packet analysis and troubleshooting expertise using Wireshark, tcpdump, and traffic generation tools to diagnose real-time routing anomalies, latency/jitter, MTU issues, and NAT/firewall traversal
Demonstrated track record of authoring production-grade technical collateral (deployment runbooks, reference architectures, white papers) and delivering technical enablement sessions to sales engineering, professional services, and partner teams

Nice To Haves

Practical experience with Python, Bash scripting, or infrastructure-as-code and configuration management tools (e.g., Ansible, Terraform, REST APIs) to automate lab deployment, test execution, and repetitive networking workflows
Working knowledge of public cloud networking architectures (AWS VPCs/Transit Gateways, Azure Virtual WAN, GCP Cloud Routers) or container networking environments (Docker, Kubernetes) connecting distributed branch edges to cloud workloads
Recognized networking or security certifications (e.g., CCIE/CCNP Enterprise or Security, JNCIP, PCNSE) or direct architectural experience with retail, kiosk, IoT/OT, or cellular WAN/5G failover deployments

Responsibilities

Lead Customer Proof of Value (POV) Engagements & Field Validations by directly owning and executing hands-on technical POVs, architectural demonstrations, and pilot evaluations with enterprise prospects and customers to validate technical capabilities, eliminate sales friction, and accelerate enterprise deal closure
Architect, Build, and Maintain Advanced Lab Topologies by designing, deploying, and maintaining resilient physical and virtual networking lab environments simulating complex enterprise branch, edge, retail network topologies to rigorously test product behavior, interoperability, and real-world scale
Drive Complex Technical Troubleshooting & Escalation Resolution by serving as the direct technical escalation bridge between field teams and core engineering to diagnose, reproduce, and resolve critical L2/L3 networking escalations, network segmentation challenges, and packet-level anomalies during active customer pilots
Author Technical Documentation, Deployment Guides, and Reference Architectures by developing production-ready technical collateral, including step-by-step deployment runbooks, reference architectures, white papers, competitive test plans, and solution briefs to standardize best practices and accelerate post-sales time-to-value
Deliver Field Readiness & Enablement Training by creating and conducting high-impact technical training programs, interactive workshops, and technical webinars for Systems Engineers (SEs), professional services, and channel partner architects to scale deployment self-sufficiency across distributed enterprise environments