Zscaler accelerates digital transformation so customers can be more agile, efficient, resilient, and secure. The Zero Trust Exchange platform protects customers from cyberattacks and data loss by securely connecting users, devices, and applications in any location. The company is looking for an experienced Principal Software Development Engineer to drive technical strategy, set engineering standards, mentor other engineers, and collaborate with Operations and Support to ensure a healthy cloud and exceptional customer outcomes.
Requirements
- 10+ years of hands‑on C programming experience on Unix/FreeBSD/Linux in distributed, enterprise‑scale environments
- Proven expertise in high availability design, failover redundancy, load balancing, and performance optimization, with strong familiarity in SLOs, observability, and capacity planning for 24×7 services
- Deep understanding of networking protocols and services: DNS, HTTP/2, QUIC, TCP/IP, and SSL/TLS
- Experience with security technologies (firewall, IPS, authentication) and networking technologies (VPN/IPSec, data‑plane traffic forwarding).
- Proficiency in troubleshooting network issues using tools such as Wireshark, tcpdump, curl, and wget
- Experience with Python, Go, or Rust for systems and network programming
- Proficiency with AI code‑assistance tools (e.g., Windsurf, Cursor, GCA, Claude) to accelerate development, refactoring, unit testing, and troubleshooting
Responsibilities
- Designing, implementing, and optimizing high‑performance network applications and protocols using C and Python
- Architecting and scaling distributed systems across multiple data centers with stringent performance, resiliency, and multi-tenant requirements
- Working within Linux environments to perform system programming, scripting, and troubleshooting
- Contributing to and guiding key domains including post‑quantum cryptography, Network Detection & Response (NDR), Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX), and Zscaler OS
- Collaborating with teams to define requirements, design architectures, and ensure reliable software through testing and debugging
Other
- Drive technical strategy, set engineering standards, mentor other engineers, and collaborate with Operations and Support to ensure a healthy cloud and exceptional customer outcomes.
- Demonstrate ownership, accountability, and a bias for precision in execution.
- This is a hybrid role, going into the San Jose, CA office 3 days a week.
- Track record of staying current with industry trends and proposing improvements to reliability, scalability, and network efficiency
- 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.
