Senior Staff Software Development Engineer - Rust + Networking

About the Position

Zscaler (NASDAQ: ZS) accelerates digital transformation so customers can be more agile, efficient, resilient, and secure. The Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform protects thousands of customers from cyberattacks and data loss by securely connecting users, devices, and applications in any location. Distributed across 200+ public data centers globally and thousands of private sites at the edge, the SASE-based Zero Trust Exchange is the world’s largest in-line cloud security platform.

We believe the future of work is Human + AI and are building an AI-native enterprise where human potential is amplified by machine intelligence to solve the world’s hardest security challenges. Driven by deep customer obsession, we are committed to the mission, outcome, and to each other. We bring these commitments to life through three core behaviors: ownership and collaboration, trust through outcomes and impact, and a challenge culture with ongoing feedback. Ready to make an impact at the company pioneering security transformation in the AI era? Join us at Zscaler.

We are looking for a Senior Staff Software Development Engineer reporting to the Director, Software Engineering to join our Client Connector Team. As a Senior Staff Engineer, you'll own critical service-layer components such as RPC, user session handling, data pipelines and help make CCA(Client Connector Agent) more stable, performant and maintainable.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement features across the CCA service, user-mode UI, and supporting subsystems (RPC server, session handler, data handler, tunnel telemetry).
• Diagnose and fix complex production issues: service crashes, race conditions, lifetime bugs, and cross-process synchronization problems.
• Improve reliability of long-running Windows service code, including cleanup/shutdown paths and inter-process communication.
• Work on VDI-specific flows (e.g., ZCC VDI SMB tunnel traffic accounting, session lifecycle).
• Review peers' code, raise the quality bar, and mentor other engineers on Windows systems programming.

Requirements

• Minimum Qualifications

  • Foundational understanding of AI/ML technologies and experience leveraging, securing, or positioning AI-driven solutions to optimize outcomes within your functional domain
  • 8+ years of production software engineering, with strong C++ (C++14/17), Rust language experience
  • Solid grasp of Windows internals: services, user sessions, security tokens, IPC, and process/thread lifetime
  • Experience debugging multithreaded C++: races, deadlocks, iterator invalidation, use-after-free
  • Track record of shipping and maintaining an enterprise desktop or endpoint product

• Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience implementing AIOps, AI-driven predictive scaling, or automated anomaly detection to optimize cloud infrastructure performance and reliability
  • Comfort with tools like WinDbg, ETW, Process Monitor, and crash dump analysis
  • Networking / VPN / ZTNA / secure tunneling background

We Offer

At Zscaler, we are committed to building a team that reflects the communities we serve and the customers we work with. We foster an inclusive environment that values all backgrounds and perspectives, emphasizing collaboration and belonging. Join us in our mission to make doing business seamless and secure.

Our Benefits program is one of the most important ways we support our employees. Zscaler proudly offers comprehensive and inclusive benefits to meet the diverse needs of our employees and their families throughout their life stages, including:

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

About the Company

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.