Sr. Staff Software Engineer — Agentic AI & Digital Experience

Zscaler•San Jose, CA

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

Zscaler is a pioneer and global leader in zero trust security. The world’s largest businesses, critical infrastructure organizations, and government agencies rely on Zscaler to secure users, branches, applications, data & devices, and to accelerate digital transformation initiatives. Distributed across more than 160 data centers globally, the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform combined with advanced AI combats billions of cyber threats and policy violations every day and unlocks productivity gains for modern enterprises by reducing costs and complexity. Here, impact in your role matters more than title and trust is built on results. 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 champion an “AI Forward, People First” philosophy to help us accelerate and innovate, empowering our people to embrace their potential. If you’re driven by purpose, thrive on solving complex challenges and want to make a positive difference on a global scale, we invite you to bring your talents to Zscaler to help shape the future of cybersecurity. We are looking for a Sr. Staff Software Engineer to join our Digital Experience team. This is a hybrid role based in San Jose, CA, reporting to the Sr. Director, Software Engineering. You will join the team responsible for building the world’s largest cloud security platform, helping us enhance services and increase our global footprint. You will play a pivotal role in enabling organizations worldwide to harness speed and agility through a cloud-first strategy, leveraging our multitenant architecture that serves over 15 million users.

Requirements

BS in Computer Science with 7+ years of experience, or MS/PhD with 6+ years of experience solving real-world problems using AI/ML and distributed systems
Proficiency in programming, data structures, algorithms, and machine learning, with exceptional problem-solving skills driven by first-principles thinking
Experience in the full lifecycle of ML models, including building, deployment, monitoring, and optimization
Hands-on experience with modern GenAI stacks, such as LangChain, CrewAI, vector stores, RAG, prompts, and evaluators
Expertise in designing and operating distributed microservices using tools like Kubernetes and Docker, and writing production-grade code in Python, Go, or Java

Nice To Haves

Experience fine-tuning and deploying proprietary SLMs/LLMs at scale, with a focus on optimizing latency, cost, safety, and evaluations
Experience delivering production-ready agentic systems, including expertise in context engineering and memory management strategies
Proven ability to design and implement high-performance, resilient systems with well-defined service-level objectives

Responsibilities

Own agentic AI delivery end-to-end, framing high-impact use cases, designing agent workflows, and building frameworks for all products
Evaluate and integrate state-of-the-art GenAI advances to deliver reliable and cost-efficient production features, utilizing LLMs, SLMs, retrieval, fine-tuning, and inference optimization
Design, implement, and operate scalable production systems, specifically focusing on microservices, data pipelines, orchestration, and caching
Partner with Product, UX, and customers to turn ambiguous problems into measurable outcomes with clear SLAs, telemetry, and feedback loops