Senior Staff Software Development Engineer (C/C++/ Linux / Automation / Networking)

Zscaler · Bengaluru · 7+ yrs experience · Posted 2026-07-18

Tech stack: C, C++, Linux, Python

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About the role

Responsibilities:
- We are looking for a Senior Staff Software Engineer to lead the architecture, design, and development across the ZPA Segmentation, Policy Engine, Micro Tenant, and Datapath teams.
- In this highly impactful role, you will own critical components of the Central Authority—including policy evaluation, orchestration, and distribution—alongside datapath enforcement.
- The ideal candidate brings a deep mastery of C/C++, Linux systems, networking, and high-performance execution.
- As a technical leader, you will drive architectural vision, mentor engineers, and collaborate across control plane and data plane teams to deliver ultra-low-latency, resilient, and secure access decisions at a global scale.
- Architect & Evolve Core Engines: Lead the architectural design and evolution of core policy engine components tasked with evaluating identity- and context-aware policies and orchestrating seamless distribution to global enforcement points
- High-Performance Implementation: Design and implement high-performance, resource-efficient datapath enforcement in C/C++ on Linux, aggressively optimizing for ultra-low latency and maximum throughput
- Scalable Distribution: Develop highly resilient, scalable policy and configuration distribution mechanisms and protocols capable of supporting millions of concurrent endpoints and broker instances
- Drive Production-Grade Quality: Ensure operational excellence through SLO-aware designs, comprehensive observability (metrics, logs, traces), automated testing, canary/gradual rollouts, and serving as an escalation point for complex distributed incidents
- Cross-Functional Leadership: Partner closely with platform, control-plane, and security engineering teams to align on APIs, schemas, and telemetry; lead critical design reviews and drive cross-functional initiatives
Qualifications:
- Experience: 7+ years of professional software development experience specializing in modern C/C++, Linux systems, and low-level performance engineering
- Systems & Architecture: Proven track record of designing, building, and operating highly available, consistent, and partition-tolerant distributed systems (including expertise in replication and rollout strategies)
- Networking Mastery: Solid core networking fundamentals including TCP/UDP, TLS/mTLS, DNS, socket I/O, connection management, and L4–L7 policy concepts
- Security & Zero Trust: Deep understanding of security principles: authentication/authorization frameworks, identity management, certificates/PKI, least privilege models, and micro-segmentation
- Automation & Tooling: High proficiency in Python for building automated test harnesses, CI/CD orchestration, benchmarking, and operational/release tooling
- AI Tool Integration: Demonstrated curiosity and active integration of AI/LLM tools into your daily workflow to augment problem-solving and boost productivity
- Deep, practical experience building policy engines, rule evaluators, or custom policy Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) for authorization/segmentation at massive scale
- Direct experience implementing robust reliability controls (such as rate limiting, admission control, and backpressure) along with advanced observability setups
- Practical AI/ML skills applied directly to production engineering, such as automated telemetry/log analysis, anomaly detection, or advanced incident triage automation

Qualifications

- Experience: 7+ years of professional software development experience specializing in modern C/C++, Linux systems, and low-level performance engineering
- Systems & Architecture:
- Proven track record of designing, building, and operating highly available, consistent, and partition-tolerant distributed systems (including expertise in replication and rollout strategies)
- Networking Mastery: Solid core networking fundamentals including TCP/UDP, TLS/mTLS, DNS, socket I/O, connection management, and L4–L7 policy concepts
- Security & Zero Trust:
- Deep understanding of security principles: authentication/authorization frameworks, identity management, certificates/PKI, least privilege models, and micro-segmentation
- Automation & Tooling: High proficiency in Python for building automated test harnesses, CI/CD orchestration, benchmarking, and operational/release tooling
- AI Tool Integration:
- Demonstrated curiosity and active integration of AI/LLM tools into your daily workflow to augment problem-solving and boost productivity
- Deep, practical experience building policy engines, rule evaluators, or custom policy Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) for authorization/segmentation at massive scale
- Direct experience implementing robust reliability controls (such as rate limiting, admission control, and backpressure) along with advanced observability setups
- Practical AI/ML skills applied directly to production engineering, such as automated telemetry/log analysis, anomaly detection, or advanced incident triage automation

Responsibilities

- We are looking for a Senior Staff Software Engineer to lead the architecture, design, and development across the ZPA Segmentation, Policy Engine, Micro Tenant, and Datapath teams.
- In this highly impactful role, you will own critical components of the Central Authority—including policy evaluation, orchestration, and distribution—alongside datapath enforcement.
- The ideal candidate brings a deep mastery of C/C++, Linux systems, networking, and high-performance execution.
- As a technical leader, you will drive architectural vision, mentor engineers, and collaborate across control plane and data plane teams to deliver ultra-low-latency, resilient, and secure access decisions at a global scale.
- Architect & Evolve Core Engines:
- Lead the architectural design and evolution of core policy engine components tasked with evaluating identity- and context-aware policies and orchestrating seamless distribution to global enforcement points
- High-Performance Implementation:
- Design and implement high-performance, resource-efficient datapath enforcement in C/C++ on Linux, aggressively optimizing for ultra-low latency and maximum throughput Scalable Distribution:
- Develop highly resilient, scalable policy and configuration distribution mechanisms and protocols capable of supporting millions of concurrent endpoints and broker instances
- Drive Production-Grade Quality:
- Ensure operational excellence through SLO-aware designs, comprehensive observability (metrics, logs, traces), automated testing, canary/gradual rollouts, and serving as an escalation point for complex distributed incidents
- Cross-Functional Leadership:
- Partner closely with platform, control-plane, and security engineering teams to align on APIs, schemas, and telemetry; lead critical design reviews and drive cross-functional initiatives

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