Staff Software Development Engineer- C/C++

Confirmed live in the last 24 hours

Zscaler

Compensation

$129,500 - $185,000/year

San Jose, California, USA

Hybrid

Posted March 18, 2026

Job Description

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 Staff Engineer to join our ZPA team. This role is a hybrid position based in our San Jose, CA office, reporting to the Manager, Software Engineering.

You will join the team that built the world’s largest cloud security platform to work on cutting-edge Zero Trust technologies. You will play a pivotal role in enabling organizations worldwide to harness speed and agility through a cloud-first strategy by developing solutions that ensure fast, reliable, and secure access to business-critical applications.

What you’ll do (Role Expectations)

Design and develop new architectures while extending and optimizing existing throughput-critical forwarding systems and pipelines that guarantee high-speed transit with imperceptible latency
Collaborate across product and operations teams to design, implement, deploy, and monitor systems in production at scale
Proactively identify and resolve hotspots to ensure smooth performance as the user base grows, identifying paths toward operational excellence
Develop and deliver cutting-edge Zero Trust technologies and solutions that ensure fast, reliable, and secure access to business-critical apps

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)

5+ years of experience in C/C++ programming within a distributed and enterprise-scale environment
Deep experience with networking protocols and traffic management technologies, including TCP/IP, HTTP/HTTPS, SSL/TLS, and QUIC
Proven experience diagnosing and resolving network performance issues, such as latency or packet

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