Sr. Staff Software Engineer — Agentic AI & Digital Experience

Zscaler•San Jose, CA

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

Zscaler accelerates digital transformation so our customers can be more agile, efficient, resilient, and secure. Our cloud native Zero Trust Exchange platform protects thousands of customers from cyberattacks and data loss by securely connecting users, devices, and applications in any location. Here, impact in your role matters more than title and trust is built on results. We believe in transparency and value constructive, honest debate—we’re focused on getting to the best ideas, faster. We build high-performing teams that can make an impact quickly and with high quality. To do this, we are building a culture of execution centered on customer obsession, collaboration, ownership and accountability. We value high-impact, high-accountability with a sense of urgency where you’re enabled to do your best work and embrace your potential. If you’re driven by purpose, thrive on solving complex challenges and want to make a positive difference on a global scale, we invite you to bring your talents to Zscaler and help shape the future of cybersecurity. Our Engineering team built the world’s largest cloud security platform from the ground up, and we keep building. With more than 100 patents and big plans for enhancing services and increasing our global footprint, the team has made us and our multitenant architecture today's cloud security leader, with more than 15 million users in 185 countries. Bring your vision and passion to our team of cloud architects, software engineers, security experts, and more who are enabling organizations worldwide to harness speed and agility with a cloud-first strategy. We’re looking for an experienced Sr. Staff Software Engineer to join our Digital Experience team. This role is hybrid and based in our San Jose, CA office three days a week. Reporting to the Sr. Director, Software Engineering, you'll be responsible for:

Requirements

BS in Computer Science (or related field) with 7+ years of experience, or MS/PhD in Computer Science (or related field) with 6+ years of experience solving real-world problems using AI/ML and distributed systems
Proficiency in programming, data structures, algorithms, and machine learning, with exceptional problem-solving skills driven by first-principles thinking
Experience in the full lifecycle of ML models, including building, deployment, monitoring, and optimization
Hands-on experience with modern GenAI stacks (e.g., LangChain/LangGraph, CrewAI, vector stores, RAG, prompts/memory, evaluators)
Expertise in designing and operating distributed microservices (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker, CI/CD pipelines, observability, AWS/GCP/Azure) and writing production-grade code in Python, Go, or Java

Nice To Haves

Experience fine-tuning and deploying proprietary SLMs/LLMs at scale, with a focus on optimizing latency, cost, safety, and evaluations
Experience delivering production-ready agentic systems, including expertise in context engineering and memory management strategies
Proven ability to design and implement high-performance, resilient systems with well-defined service-level objectives (SLOs)

Responsibilities

Own agentic AI delivery end-to-end, including framing high-impact use cases, designing agent workflows (tool use, planning, memory, context), and building frameworks for all products
Evaluate and integrate state-of-the-art GenAI advances (e.g., LLMs/SLMs, retrieval, fine-tuning, inference optimization) to deliver reliable and cost-efficient production features
Design, implement, and operate scalable production systems, including microservices, data pipelines, orchestration, and caching
Partner with Product, UX, and customers to turn ambiguous problems into measurable outcomes with clear SLAs, telemetry, and feedback loops