Sr. Staff Software Development Engineer - AI 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.

The Role

We are looking for an AI Engineer to join our team. The position is based in Bangalore or Mohali, reporting to the Snr Manager, Product Business Operations in the AI Native - Product Operations Platform department. We are seeking a hands-on engineer to help scale the agentic layer of our platform by designing production-grade AI systems and expanding foundational capabilities. This role is built for a strong builder who understands modern AI systems in practice and thrives in a high-velocity, rapid-iteration environment.

What You'll Do

• Build and scale the agentic layer of the AI Native - Product Operations Platform by designing production-grade AI systems and supporting platform capabilities
• Develop hands-on across FastAPI, NextJS, and Postgres while applying practical knowledge of RAG architectures, embeddings, and vector retrieval
• Implement standards, patterns, and guardrails to ensure AI development on the platform remains scalable, reliable, and cohesive
• Partner closely with Product and other stakeholders to translate business needs into scalable technical solutions optimized for cost and throughput
• Contribute to a high-velocity delivery environment characterized by frequent releases, rapid iteration, and end-to-end execution

Who You Are

• A pragmatic builder with a passion for rolling up your sleeves to create, iterate, and ship production-grade software
• Someone who thrives in ambiguity and fast-paced environments, maintaining focus and execution velocity amidst rapid change
• An owner who brings deep accountability, a strong bias for action, and end-to-end execution to every project
• A high-trust collaborator who excels at partnering with cross-functional teams to translate business needs into technical solutions
• A champion of simplicity, with a proven ability to distill complex technical problems and AI architectures into clean, actionable plans

Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years of industry experience with demonstrated curiosity and active exploration of AI tools, with a proven history of integrating new technologies to enhance daily workflows and augment problem-solving
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• Strong hands-on software engineering experience with FastAPI, NextJS, and Postgres, including building application stacks end-to-end
• Proven experience building and deploying agentic AI systems, RAG architectures, embeddings, and vector retrieval systems in production environments
• Familiarity with prompt engineering, orchestration patterns, agent workflows, and the implementation of evaluation frameworks or guardrails
• Comfortable operating in a high-velocity delivery environment with a track record of supporting weekly feature releases

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working in a startup or fast-scaling product environment with a broad technical range across backend, frontend, and platform engineering
• Proven ability to design AI systems optimized for low cost, high throughput, extensibility, and long-term scalability
• Experience selecting and implementing AI development tools, observability frameworks, and LLM application patterns

Benefits

Zscaler's benefits program includes:

• Various health plans
• Time off plans for vacation and sick time
• Parental leave options
• Retirement options
• Education reimbursement
• In-office perks, and more

Learn more about Zscaler's hybrid working model and benefits here.

Equal Opportunity

Zscaler is committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all individuals. We strive to create a workplace where employees are treated with respect and have the chance to succeed. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy or related medical conditions), age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.

Zscaler complies with all applicable federal, state, and local pay transparency rules.

Zscaler is committed to providing reasonable support (called accommodations or adjustments) in our recruiting processes for candidates who are differently abled, have long term conditions, mental health conditions or sincerely held religious beliefs, or who are neurodivergent or require pregnancy-related support.

By applying for this role, you adhere to applicable laws, regulations, and Zscaler policies, including those related to security and privacy standards and guidelines.