Sr Engineering Manager, API Platform

Zscaler•Santa Clara, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Zscaler is seeking a Sr. Engineering Manager to lead its API Platform team. This hybrid role is based in the Santa Clara, California office three days a week and reports to the Sr. Director for the API Platform team. The manager will lead the delivery of scalable, secure, high-performing platforms and systems that empower engineering teams, with a focus on platform efficiency, scalability, developer experience, and management of senior technical talent. The role includes setting the vision and roadmap for the API Platform and developer tooling; overseeing API standardization, design, and governance; and directing architecture and standards for product and provisioning APIs. The manager will ensure reliable, reproducible, and traceable state changes across distributed services, coach senior technical contributors, and guide delivery of reliable microservices, workflow workers, and SDKs. The role partners closely with Product Management and Security and promotes shared ownership of architectural work, dataset design, and foundational services.

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.
At least 8 years of experience as an engineering leader, including at least 3 years managing technical teams for developer tooling, API platforms, or cloud-based systems across multi-language ecosystems including Java, Go, and JavaScript.
At least 10 years of overall software engineering experience, including hands-on proficiency designing APIs and SDKs for containerized environments such as Kubernetes and Docker.
Deep understanding of distributed systems concepts such as caching, queues, and pub/sub architectures, and cloud service experience with AWS, GCP, or Azure.
Advanced understanding of API-first design principles and standards, including OpenAPI/Swagger, REST, JSON, and Authn/z.

Nice To Haves

Practical experience and proficiency applying modern AI tools to the software development lifecycle.
Proven experience in the Cloud Security and Networking domain.
Experience driving engineering practices for workflow automation and developer productivity using open-source or proprietary tools.
Proactive advocacy of modern engineering practices such as DevSecOps, CI/CD, and Infrastructure-as-Code across large engineering organizations.

Responsibilities

Lead the vision and roadmap for the API Platform and developer tooling, aligned with organizational goals, technical scalability, and industry best practices.
Oversee API standardization, design, and governance to improve developer experience and productivity across engineering teams and products.
Direct architecture and standards for product and provisioning APIs, ensuring state changes across distributed services are reliable, reproducible, and traceable.
Manage and coach Senior Staff Engineers and other highly skilled technical contributors, fostering collaboration and professional growth.
Ensure delivery of reliable, available microservices, workflow workers, and SDKs with safe retry semantics across Java, Go, and Python, using gRPC, Temporal, Postgres, and Redis.
Partner with Product Management and Security to build scalable and secure solutions that meet business objectives.
Promote shared ownership by ensuring architectural work, dataset design, and foundational services are built collaboratively, reducing knowledge silos and enabling the team to maintain and debug systems in production.