Senior Staff Software Development Engineer - Control Plane

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 Sr. Staff Software Engineer for a hybrid role based in Hyderabad/Bangalore, reporting to the Sr. Director of Software Engineering in the platform convergence department. You will design and build a low-latency, high-throughput data forwarding plane using Rust, leveraging its async/await model for efficient I/O and service-oriented infrastructure. Your work will focus on developing distributed, scalable systems that bridge the gap between control and orchestration layers through fault-tolerant gRPC-based services. What you’ll do (Role Expectations) * Design and build a low-latency, high-throughput data forwarding plane using Rust, leveraging its async/await model for efficient I/O and service-oriented infrastructure * Develop distributed, scalable systems with a focus on concurrency, fault tolerance, and messaging * Implement and maintain gRPC-based APIs and services to integrate forwarding plane capabilities with control and orchestration layers * Optimize system performance through profiling tools across kernel-space and user-space * Engage in code reviews, system design discussions, technical documentation, and mentoring junior engineers 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) * 7+ years of software development experience with extensive coding in Rust, particularly in systems programming and async frameworks like Tokio or async-std * Proven expertise in building resilient, observable, and horizontally scalable distributed systems * Strong understanding of Linux fundamentals, including networking, namespaces, sockets, and kernel-user space interaction * Proficient in container-based environments, Git, CI/CD workflows, and performance instrumentation What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications) * Experience with systems languages like C/C++ or Go, particularly in performance-critical environments * Familiarity with Linux networking stacks, kernel-space technologies (eBPF, XDP, DPDK), bare-metal deployments, and Kubernetes networking * Hands-on experience with gRPC, Protobufs, service-oriented architectures, and L2–L4 networking protocols #LI-Hybrid #LI-SU1 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! Learn more about Zscaler's hybrid working model and benefits here. By applying for this role, you adhere to applicable laws, regulations, and Zscaler policies, including those related to security and privacy standards and guidelines. 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. See more information by clicking on the Know Your Rights: Workplace Discrimination is Illegal link. Pay Transparency 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.

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 Platform Engineer — OpenStack & Storage Infrastructure to join our team. This is a Hybrid role based in Bangalore (3 days in office), reporting to the Senior Manager, Software Development Engineering in the Zero Trust Exchange department. As a Staff Platform Engineer, you’ll lead the architecture and build-out of our OpenStack-based private cloud and storage infrastructure for data center environments. You’ll define the foundation our products and teams run on — owning reliability, scalability, and security at every layer from compute to block and object storage. What you’ll do (Role Expectations) * Own OpenStack architecture and lifecycle across data center environments — design, deploy, and operate Nova, Neutron, Cinder, Swift, and Glance at scale with a focus on high availability and operational resilience * Lead storage infrastructure design — architect and deliver enterprise-grade block, object, and file storage solutions using Ceph, and integrate them seamlessly within OpenStack and bare-metal environments * Build and automate DC platform capabilities using Terraform, Ansible, and GitOps workflows while defining standards for networking (SDN/OVN), RBAC, multi-tenancy, quotas, and resource isolation * Drive observability and capacity planning — instrument the full stack with Prometheus, Grafana, and centralized logging to manage SLOs, track storage utilization, and optimize cost at data center scale * Champion platform security and operational excellence by enforcing hardening across tiers, managing access controls, troubleshooting complex production issues, and mentoring engineers to continuously evolve the platform 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. You adapt to what’s needed, navigating seamlessly between high-level strategy and hands-on execution. * You are a problem-solver. You seek out challenges because you are energized by finding solutions, knowing that solving the hard problems delivers the biggest impact. * You are customer-obsessed. You build deep empathy for the customer — both internal and external — and anchor your decisions in solving their real-world problems. You champion their needs from start to finish, knowing their success is our success. * You operate with urgency. You understand that in a high-growth environment, speed and quality are not mutually exclusive. You have a relentless focus on execution and a bias for action, delivering high-impact results quickly to win for the customer and the team. What We’re Looking for (Minimum Qualifications) * Demonstrated curiosity and active exploration of AI tools, with a proven history of integrating new technologies to enhance daily workflows and augment problem-solving * 5+ years in platform/infrastructure engineering with 5+ years operating OpenStack in production at multi-rack, multi-DC scale * Deep hands-on expertise in OpenStack core services — Nova, Neutron, Cinder, Swift, Glance, Keystone — including upgrade strategies, HA configurations, and operational troubleshooting * Strong storage engineering background — production experience with Ceph (RBD, RGW, CephFS), performance tuning, failure recovery, and capacity management * Proficiency in Python and Bash/Go for automation, tooling, and OpenStack operator customizations * Expertise in DC networking (OVN/OVS, SDN, BGP, and VLAN/VXLAN fabric design) and proven leadership of complex infrastructure initiatives with rigorous IaC/GitOps practices What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications) * Experience designing and operating sovereign or regulated DC environments with strict compliance and isolation requirements, or hybrid cloud architectures bridging private and public cloud environments * Familiarity with bare-metal provisioning (Ironic) and converged infrastructure management * Contributions to OpenStack or Ceph open source projects, or published technical talks and papers #LI-RM6 #LI-Hybrid 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! Learn more about Zscaler's hybrid working model and benefits here. By applying for this role, you adhere to applicable laws, regulations, and Zscaler policies, including those related to security and privacy standards and guidelines. 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. See more information by clicking on the Know Your Rights: Workplace Discrimination is Illegal link. Pay Transparency 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.