Sr. Staff Software Development Engineer-AI Security (Network, Security, LLM)

About Zscaler

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.

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.

Role

We are looking for a Sr. Staff Software Development Engineer-AI Security to join our team. This is a Hybrid (based in San Jose, CA or Bellevue, WA with a 3 days in office requirement) role, reporting to the Director of Software Engineering in the Emerging Tech department. You will be responsible for designing and implementing core infrastructure components and distributed systems, serving as a foundational architect for our AI security solution. This high-impact role focuses on scaling security infrastructure to support hundreds of millions of users, collaborating with stakeholders across the development lifecycle to drive innovation and technical excellence.

What You’ll Do (Role Expectations)

• Architect, develop, and optimize a low-latency, high-throughput AI Security plane utilizing Rust, specifically leveraging its async/await model for highly efficient I/O and service-oriented architecture
• Build resilient, distributed, and scalable systems, emphasizing concurrency, fault tolerance, and robust messaging protocols
• Implement and maintain gRPC services and APIs to ensure seamless integration of the AI Security plane with control and orchestration infrastructure
• Systematically enhance performance across the entire stack, including LLM models, by employing profiling tools for both kernel-space and user-space components
• Lead complex, multi-functional projects and initiatives, defining the technical roadmap and driving execution across teams

Who You Are (Success Profile)

• Thrives in ambiguity. Comfortable building the path as you walk it. Thrives in a dynamic environment, seeing ambiguity not as a hindrance, but as the raw material to build something meaningful.
• Acts like an owner. Passion for the mission fuels bias for action. Operates with integrity because you genuinely care about the outcome. True ownership involves leveraging dynamic range: the ability to navigate seamlessly between high-level strategy and hands-on execution.
• Loves running towards the challenges. Laser-focused on finding the solution, knowing that solving the hard problems delivers the biggest impact.
• Is a high-trust collaborator. Ambitious for the team, not just yourself. Embraces our challenge culture by giving and receiving ongoing feedback—knowing that candor delivered with clarity and respect is the truest way to earn trust.
• Loves what you do and does it with purpose. Is a problem-solver. Practical experience with gRPC, Protobufs, and L4-L7 networking protocols, including TCP/IP, TLS, QUIC, HTTP, and WebSockets (WSS).

What We’re Looking For (Minimum Qualifications)

• Foundational understanding of AI/ML technologies and experience leveraging, securing, or positioning AI-driven solutions to optimize outcomes within your functional domain
• 8+ years of software engineering experience
• Deep experience in systems programming using Rust, with a focus on asynchronous frameworks such as Tokio or async-std
• Past experience designing and implementing horizontally scalable, highly available, and observable distributed systems
• Strong command of Linux internals (including kernel-user space interaction, networking, sockets, and namespaces) combined with skill in performance instrumentation, containerized environments, Git workflows, and CI/CD pipelines

What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications)

• Expert in systems languages such as C/C++ or Rust with a focus on performance optimization, including deep understanding of Linux networking stacks, Kubernetes networking, service meshes, and LLM model optimization
• Practical experience with gRPC, Protobufs, and L4-L7 networking protocols, including TCP/IP, TLS, QUIC, HTTP, and WebSockets (WSS)

Benefits

Zscaler’s benefits program is one of the most important ways we support our employees. Zscaler proudly offers comprehensive and inclusive benefits to meet the diverse needs of our employees and their families throughout their life stages, including:

• Variety of health plans
• Time off plans for vacation and sick time
• Parental leave options
• Retirement options
• Education reimbursement
• In-office perks, and more!

Pay Transparency

Zscaler complies with all applicable federal, state, and local pay transparency rules. Zscaler is committed to providing reasonable support (called accommodations or adjustments) in our recruiting processes for candidates who are differently abled, have long term conditions, mental health conditions or sincerely held religious beliefs, or who are neurodivergent or require pregnancy-related support.