Staff Software Development Engineer

Zscaler•Santa Clara, CA

5d•$152,000 - $190,000

About The Position

Zscaler is hiring a Staff Software Development Engineer for its Zero Trust Exchange department in Santa Clara, California. Reporting to the Senior Director, Software Development Engineering, this role leads the design and development of scalable, resilient, and secure control plane platform services. The engineer will drive architecture and technical strategy across teams and deliver platform capabilities that improve reliability, operability, and developer velocity. The role calls for deep distributed-systems expertise, cross-functional technical leadership, and pragmatic execution. The engineer will guide complex initiatives, address system bottlenecks and reliability risks, set engineering standards through reviews and mentorship, and evaluate emerging technologies—including Agentic AI and AI-assisted workflows—to improve engineering and product outcomes.

Requirements

At least 5 years of software engineering experience, including significant experience designing and building large-scale distributed systems and backend platform services.
Deep expertise in system design, microservices architecture, API design, data modeling, and operating highly available, fault-tolerant production services.
Strong proficiency in one or more modern programming languages such as Java, Go, or Python, with a record of delivering production-grade software.
Experience leading complex technical initiatives across multiple teams, driving architectural decisions, and influencing engineering direction beyond the immediate team.
Strong understanding of cloud-native technologies, observability, reliability engineering, and secure software development practices.
Demonstrated curiosity and active exploration of AI tools, with a history of integrating new technologies to enhance workflows and problem-solving.

Nice To Haves

Proven ability to use AI technologies and workflows to drive measurable operational efficiency.
Experience applying AI-forward engineering practices, such as developer copilots, intelligent automation, AI-assisted incident analysis, or ML/LLM-powered platform capabilities, to improve engineering productivity or product outcomes.
Experience building control plane, policy, identity, security, or other mission-critical platform systems in a SaaS or cybersecurity environment, with Kubernetes, PAM, or IGA.
Experience mentoring senior engineers and serving as a recognized technical leader for architecture, operational excellence, and engineering standards across an organization.

Responsibilities

Lead the architecture, design, and delivery of large-scale control plane and platform services, emphasizing scalability, availability, security, and operational excellence.
Drive complex technical initiatives across teams, align stakeholders on architecture and execution plans, and deliver against business and engineering priorities.
Identify and resolve system bottlenecks, reliability risks, and architectural gaps across distributed systems; improve performance, observability, and maintainability.
Set technical standards through design reviews, code reviews, engineering best practices, and hands-on mentorship of senior engineers.
Evaluate and apply emerging technologies, including Agentic AI and AI-assisted engineering workflows, to improve developer productivity, system intelligence, and product delivery outcomes.