Staff Software Development Engineer
Staff Software Development Engineer at Zscaler in Santa Clara, leading the architecture and delivery of large-scale, secure control-plane platform services for the Zero Trust Exchange cloud security platform. Day to day: driving cross-team technical initiatives, system design, reliability improvements, and mentoring senior engineers, using Java/Go/Python, cloud-native tooling, and AI-assisted work
- Compensation
- $152K–$190K / yr
- Location
- Santa Clara, California, USA
- Work setup
- Hybrid
- Seniority
- Staff
- Employment
- Full time
- Experience
- 5+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- 5+ years of software engineering experience, including 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 services in production
- Strong proficiency in one or more modern programming languages such as Java, Go, or Python, with production-grade delivery track record
- Experience leading complex technical initiatives across multiple teams and influencing engineering direction
- Strong understanding of cloud-native technologies, observability, reliability engineering, and secure software development practices
- Demonstrated curiosity and active exploration of AI tools, integrating new technologies into daily workflows
Nice to have
- Proven ability to leverage AI technologies and workflows to drive measurable operational efficiency
- Experience with AI-forward engineering practices such as developer copilots, intelligent automation, AI-assisted incident analysis, or ML/LLM-powered platform capabilities
- Experience building control plane, policy, identity, security, or other mission-critical platform systems in SaaS or cybersecurity, with Kubernetes, PAM, IGA
- Experience mentoring senior engineers and serving as a recognized technical leader for architecture and engineering standards
Full description
Zscaler (NASDAQ: ZS) accelerates digital transformation so customers can be more agile, efficient, resilient, and secure. The Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform protects thousands of customers from cyberattacks and data loss by securely connecting users, devices, and applications in any location. Distributed across 200+ public data centers globally and thousands of private sites at the edge, the SASE-based Zero Trust Exchange is the world’s largest in-line cloud security platform.
We believe the future of work is Human + AI and are building an AI-native enterprise where human potential is amplified by machine intelligence to solve the world’s hardest security challenges. Driven by deep customer obsession, we are committed to the mission, outcome, and to each other. We bring these commitments to life through three core behaviors: ownership and collaboration, trust through outcomes and impact, and a challenge culture with ongoing feedback. Ready to make an impact at the company pioneering security transformation in the AI era? Join us at Zscaler.
**Role
**We are looking for a Staff Software Development Engineer to join our team. This is a Santa Clara, CA role, reporting to the Senior Director, Software Development Engineering in the Zero Trust Exchange department. In this role, you will lead the design and development of highly scalable, resilient, and secure control plane platform services that power the Zero Trust Exchange. You will drive architecture, influence technical strategy across teams, and deliver platform capabilities that improve reliability, operability, and developer velocity. The ideal candidate pairs deep distributed systems expertise with strong cross-functional leadership and a pragmatic, execution-focused mindset.
What you’ll do (Role Expectations)
- Lead the architecture, design, and delivery of large-scale control plane and platform services with a strong focus on scalability, availability, security, and operational excellence
- Drive complex cross-team technical initiatives, align stakeholders on architecture and execution plans, and ensure high-quality delivery against business and engineering priorities
- Identify and resolve system bottlenecks, reliability risks, and architectural gaps across distributed systems, improving performance, observability, and long-term maintainability
- Set a high technical bar through design reviews, code reviews, engineering best practices, and hands-on mentorship of senior engineers across the organization
- Evaluate and apply emerging technologies, including Agentic AI, AI-assisted engineering workflows where appropriate, to improve developer productivity, system intelligence, and product delivery outcomes
Who You Are (Success Profile)
- You act like an owner. You have a deep passion for the mission and a natural bias for action, seamlessly navigating between high-level architectural strategy and hands-on execution to deliver high-integrity outcomes.