Staff Software Development Engineer- Golang

Confirmed live in the last 24 hours

Zscaler

Compensation

$129,500 - $185,000/year

San Jose, California, USA

Hybrid

Posted March 3, 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 Software Development Engineer to join our Emerging Tech team.This role is hybrid and based in our San Jose, CA office three days a week, reporting to the VP, Software Engineering- AI Security.

You are going to engineer the high-performance backbone of our AI platform, enabling secure access to all AI applications. The primary focus for this role is to develop a secure, low-latency infrastructure service optimized for both sub-millisecond speeds and extreme resilience. You will build an intelligent security intermediary, designed to inspect and secure AI traffic flows between users and LLMs at scale.

What you’ll do (Role Expectations)

Design, implement, and optimize high-performance web proxy services and build and maintain low-latency, high-throughput networked systems
Develop robust services using Go, with the option to utilize Rust or C where appropriate
Work extensively with socket programming, HTTP/1.1 through HTTP/3, and TLS / mTLS
Optimize performance related to concurrency, memory management, CPU usage, network I/O, and connection handling while ensuring system reliability, fault tolerance, and security
Collaborate with AI/ML, platform, and infrastructure teams to review code, mentor engineers, and contribute to architectural decisions

Who You Are (Success Profile)

You thrive in ambiguity, comfortable building the path as you walk it and seeing ambiguity as raw material to build something meaningful.
You act like an owner, operating with integrity and navigating seamlessly between high-level strategy and hands-on execution.
You are a problem-solver who seeks out challenges because you are energized by finding solutions that deliver the biggest impact.
You are customer-obsessed, building deep empathy for internal and external customers and championing their needs from start to finish.
You operate with urgency, understanding that speed and quality are not mutually exclusive and maintaining a bias for action to deliver high-impact results.

What We’re Looking for (Minimum Qualifications)

5+ years of professional software engineering experience
Strong proficiency in Golang is preferred, though Rust or C experience is acceptable
Deep understanding of network programming including sockets, TCP/UDP, and connection pooling
Strong knowledge of HTTP and TLS internals with experience building high-performance, low-latency systems
Solid understanding of concurrency and parallel programming with experience debugging complex production issues

What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications)