Staff Software Development Engineer (Backend - Python/Go/Rust)

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. Role We are looking for a Staff Software Development Engineer (Backend) to join our team. This is a Hybrid (Bangalore) role, reporting to the Director, Threat Researcher in the Engineering department. In this role, you will architect, scale, and operate complex distributed systems and cloud-native platforms running on Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure. You will own end-to-end technical initiatives, set high standards for reliability and performance, and multiply the overall impact of the engineering team. What you’ll do (Role Expectations) Lead the design, development, testing, and evolution of backend services and APIs, making sound architectural trade-offs with a focus on scalability, reliability, performance, and maintainability Drive services end to end — development, deployment, scaling, monitoring, and ongoing production support — and set the standard for operational ownership across the team Design and manage services in containerized environments, leading deployment strategy, scaling, and troubleshooting on Kubernetes Lead incident response and root-cause analysis across distributed systems, monitor service health, debug complex failures, and drive systemic fixes that improve long-term production reliability Work across cloud infrastructure and compute environments to support workload deployment, service configuration, and operational troubleshooting, including multi-environment and capacity considerations Who You Are (Success Profile) You act like an owner with a strong bias for action, operating with integrity, caring genuinely about outcomes, and navigating seamlessly between high-level strategy and hands-on execution You are a high-trust collaborator who is ambitious for the team, embracing a challenge culture through ongoing feedback delivered with candor, clarity, and respect You are customer-obsessed, building deep empathy for internal and external…