Staff Software Development Engineer

Zscaler•San Jose, CA

4d•Hybrid

About The Position

Zscaler accelerates digital transformation to ensure our customers can be more agile, efficient, resilient, and secure. As an AI-forward enterprise, we are constantly pushing the envelope, leveraging the world’s largest security data lake to power our cloud-native Zero Trust Exchange platform. This innovation protects our 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 say, impact over activity. We seek innovators who actively use AI to amplify their impact and who thrive in an environment where we leverage intelligent systems to stay ahead of evolving threats. 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 be part of the team that’s helping to secure the AI age, we invite you to bring your talents to Zscaler and help shape the future of cybersecurity. Role We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer - AI Security to join our team. This is a Hybrid role based in San Jose, CA, reporting to the Director, Software Engineering in the Engineering department. We are building security products that enable organizations to adopt AI applications and agents safely and at scale. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will take ownership of complex engineering challenges, build secure and scalable systems, and raise the technical bar through hands-on execution and collaboration.

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 software-engineering experience, including technical leadership across complex production systems
Strong proficiency in Go, Rust, and Python, with deep expertise in systems engineering, security engineering, and backend platforms
Demonstrated experience architecting and evolving platforms that span multiple teams or product areas
Proven ability to remain hands-on through coding, prototyping, design review, and complex debugging
Deep understanding of concurrency, networking, storage, APIs, data systems, and cloud infrastructure on AWS, GCP, or Azure

Nice To Haves

Experience building enterprise security, endpoint, cloud, or infrastructure products
Familiarity with AI/ML systems, analytics platforms, AI applications, or AI security
Experience helping a startup or high-growth product evolve into a scalable engineering organization

Responsibilities

Define technical direction and architecture for major areas of the product
Lead high-impact initiatives that span multiple teams and system boundaries
Turn ambiguous product and security challenges into clear, executable engineering strategies
Establish standards for secure, reliable, scalable, and maintainable systems
Identify systemic risks, architectural gaps, and investments needed for long-term growth