Sr. Staff Software Development Engineer - Go/Distributed Systems

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 Software Development Engineer to join our team. This is a hybrid role based in Hyderabad, reporting to the Senior Manager of Software Engineering. You will join the Engineering team that built the world’s largest cloud security platform from the ground up. As a leader in our multitenant architecture, you will bring your vision and passion to help organizations worldwide harness speed and agility with a cloud-first strategy. What you’ll do (Role Expectations) - Understand how to build and operate high scale systems - Provide service and product wide architectural guidance, and drive impactful technical decisions - Establish and enforce best practices for coding, testing, observability, and CI/CD pipelines to maintain high-quality, production-ready services - Drive cross-team collaboration and lead initiatives in performance optimization, reliability improvements, and adoption of new technologies/tools to accelerate feature velocity 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 - 7+ years of experience in Java/Go coding in a highly distributed and enterprise-scale environment - Working knowledge of cloud infrastructure services on AWS or Azure - Strong experience with distributed systems and microservices architecture - Strong database knowledge of SQL constructs and data modeling - Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent experience What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications) - Experience building full CI/CD systems leveraging Kubernetes, web service frameworks, and streaming data infrastructure like Apache Spark, Kafka, Druid, or ElasticSearch - Experience building reliable data tiers using Postgres, Redis, Terraform, Ansible, graph databases like Neo4j or AWS Neptune, and developing GraphQL APIs - Deep knowledge of identity and access management systems (Okta, SAML, OAuth), test automation, Python programming, and designing fault-tolerant distributed systems for networking or cloud security products #LI-Hybrid #LI-AN4 At Zscaler, we are committed to building a team that reflects the communities we serve and the customers we work with. We foster