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 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 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.

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.

We are looking for a Principal Software Development Engineer to join our team. This is a Hybrid role, reporting to the Senior Director, Software Engineering in the ZPA department. You will lead the architecture, deployment, and evolution of large-scale Generative AI platforms and intelligent agent systems in production.

As a hands-on technical leader, you will design high-performance AI systems that are scalable, secure, observable, and production-ready, while building critical platform components and partnering across multidisciplinary teams to deliver reliable AI capabilities at scale.

Build and maintain MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers to standardize secure interactions between LLMs, agents, enterprise tools, APIs, databases, and local resources

Design and deploy high-performance containerized Generative AI workloads in production using Docker, Kubernetes, model quantization, and KV-cache optimization to reduce latency and memory footprint

Define engineering standards, architectural patterns, and best practices for building robust enterprise AI systems

You're comfortable building the path as you walk it. Foundational understanding of AI/ML technologies and experience leveraging, securing, or positioning AI-driven solutions to optimize outcomes within your functional domain

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
10+ years of software engineering experience, with significant expertise in distributed systems, platform engineering, or machine learning infrastructure
Proven experience building, deploying, and operating production-grade AI/ML or LLM systems at scale
Strong expertise in Python and systems languages such as Go, C++, Rust, or Java, alongside hands-on experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud-native deployment patterns

Hands-on experience implementing AI safety, evaluation benchmarks, guardrails, and observability frameworks for LLMs in enterprise environments

Strong experience in RAG systems, vector databases, embedding pipelines, and retrieval tuning

Experience with inference and serving frameworks such as vLLM, Tensor RT-LLM, Triton, Ray Serve, or equivalent

LI-hybrid
At Zscaler, we are committed to building a team that reflects the communities we serve and the customers we work with. Various health plans

Parental leave options

Retirement options

Education reimbursement

In-office perks, and more!

Learn more about Zscaler's hybrid working model and benefits here .

By applying for this role, you adhere to applicable laws, regulations, and Zscaler policies, including those related to security and privacy standards and guidelines.

All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy or related medical conditions), age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. 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.

Principal Software Engineer, Developer Platform Engineering

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