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 Director, Software Development to join our team. This role is available as a hybrid opportunity 3 days a week in San Jose, CA or as a remote position, reporting to the Production Engineering organization in the Cloud Infrastructure & Operations department. Join Zscaler to be a force multiplier for the reliability of a global platform protecting over 15 million users.

In this role, you will define the technical vision for a broad software domain, lead the architecture of major subsystems, and drive complex, cross-functional initiatives from concept through execution aligned to an "automation-first" culture across the company. You will act as a force multiplier for engineering excellence by championing innovation, raising design standards, and building software systems that are resilient, scalable, and built for long-term impact across products that reduce our Mean Time to Mitigate (MTTM) and shape the scalability of our globally distributed, multi-cloud infrastructure.

What you’ll do (Role Expectations)

Lead the design and development of highly scalable, performant, and reliable distributed systems in cloud and hybrid environments
Architect major software components and review and approve critical design proposals, with deep consideration for performance, operability, and long-term maintainability
Champion engineering excellence through strong software design practices, code quality, observability, performance optimization, and operational readiness
Mentor senior engineers and technical leaders, raise the overall engineering bar, and help attract top technical talent to Zscaler
Act as a lead Incident Commander (TDO on-call), develop response playbooks, and conduct deep-dive post-incident analyses

Who You Are (Success Profile)