Sr. Staff Backend Engineer

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. Here, impact in your role matters more than title and trust is built on results. 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. 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. Role We are looking for a Sr. Staff Backend Engineer to join our team. This is a Hybrid (Ramat Gan) role, reporting to the Manager, Software Engineering in the Exposure Management & Security Operations department. Avalor, now part of Zscaler, powers the data foundation behind Zscaler's Security Operations platform, ingesting, unifying, and contextualizing data from hundreds of security and business tools to power security modules that deliver actionable insights and measurable risk reduction to our customers. In this role, you'll own complex backend systems that sit at the heart of our data platform, designing and building services that ingest, process, and move massive amounts of data reliably and at scale for enterprise customers worldwide. What you’ll do (Role Expectations) - Developing and maintaining high-quality, scalable backend services within a microservices architecture using Java/Spring Boot and Python - Designing and building data pipelines and ETL workflows that ingest, transform, and unify data from diverse sources at enterprise scale - Leading solutions from scratch to production; creating technical designs, driving architectural decisions and taking full ownership of complex projects — from design and implementation through deployment, monitoring performance, reliability and cost, and proactively driving improvements - Collaborating closely with cross-functional partners - product managers, frontend/backend engineers and UX designers - Serving as a technical anchor for the team - leading design discussions, setting engineering standards, and driving best practices across the codebase Who You Are (Success Profile) - You thrive in ambiguity. You're comfortable building the path as you walk it. You thrive in a dynamic environment, seeing ambiguity not as a hindrance, but as the raw material to build something meaningful. - You act like an owner. Your passion for the mission fuels your bias for action. You operate 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. - You are a problem-solver. You love running towards the challenges because you are laser-focused on finding the solution, knowing that solving the hard problems delivers the biggest impact. - You are a high-trust collaborator. You are ambitious for the team, not just yourself. You embrace our challenge culture by giving and receiving ongoing feedback—knowing that candor delivered with clarity and respect is the truest form of teamwork and the fastest way to earn trust. - You are a learner. You have a true growth mindset and are obsessed with your own development, actively seeking feedback to become a better partner and a stronger teammate. You love what you do and you do it with purpose. 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 - 5+ years of proven backend software engineering experience building and shipping complex SaaS solutions in production, with proficiency in Java/Spring Boot or a comparable high-level backend language - Hands-on experience with data-intensive systems, including ETL pipelines, big data stores, and high-throughput data processing - Proficiency in high-scale, multi-tenant cloud architecture, including microservices, Docker, Kubernetes, and workflow orchestrati