Staff Software Engineer, Go (Service Platform & Orchestration)
Principal Software Engineer at Zscaler designs and builds a cloud-native management plane for a global fleet of 100k+ instances using workflow-as-code (Temporal), AI-driven SRE, and distributed systems to enable deterministic provisioning and lifecycle operations.
- Compensation
- $212K–$265K / yr
- Location
- Santa Clara, California, USA
- Work setup
- Hybrid
- Seniority
- Staff
- Employment
- Contract
- Experience
- 5+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Foundational understanding of AI/ML technologies and experience leveraging, securing, or positioning AI-driven solutions to optimize outcomes within your functional domain
- BS/MS in Computer Science or a related technical field with 5+ years of experience in hyperscale systems, with a deep understanding of the unique failure modes and technical hurdles that only emerge a
- Mastery of backend systems languages with a strong preference for Go (or deep expertise in Java, C++, or Python with a demonstrated ability to rapidly adopt Go), along with a proven track record of se
- Strong experience designing and operating complex distributed systems, with a focus on solving systemic challenges in concurrency, failure handling, and performance optimization
- Proven track record of developing Platform APIs (REST/gRPC) with strong guarantees for idempotency, verification, and safe rollout patterns
- U.S. citizenship due to the nature of the customers assigned to this role
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 Engineer (Service Platform & Orchestration) to join our team. This is a Hybrid (3 days in office) role, reporting to the VP, Engineering in the Zero Trust Exchange department. In this high-ownership position, you will engineer the management plane and reliability systems that govern ZIA’s fleet lifecycle at massive scale.
This is a hands-on building role where you will lead the transformation of our infrastructure from legacy automation into a stateful, durable management plane (built on Temporal) to achieve deterministic "one-touch" provisioning and lifecycle operations. You will treat "infrastructure as a distributed system," developing self-healing capabilities and AI-driven SRE practices for a global fleet of 100k+ instances.
What you’ll do (Role Expectations)
- Lead the hands-on development and migration to a workflow-as-code platform (Temporal), building replay-safe, idempotent workflows that ensure deterministic operations across a global scale
- Move the organization beyond "scripted automation" toward a robust management plane that treats the entire global fleet as a single, eventually-consistent distributed system
- Design and implement services that leverage LLMs and ML for intelligent signal correlation, automated triage, and "self-correcting" fleet operations
- Develop framework-level services and internal APIs that ensure all new products are delivered "orchestration-ready" with reliability hooks built directly into the code
- Build deep telemetry (metrics, traces, and events) into the management plane so that every fleet-wide action is fully explainable, auditable, and replayable