Principal Software Development Engineer

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 Principal Software Engineer to join our team. This is a hybrid role based in Bangalore, reporting to the Sr. Director of Software Engineering within 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. You will develop distributed, scalable systems with a focus on concurrency and fault tolerance to bridge the gap between control and orchestration layers.

What you’ll do (Role Expectations)

Design and build a low-latency, high-throughput data forwarding plane using Rust and async/await models for efficient service-oriented infrastructure

Develop distributed, scalable systems with a heavy 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 deep profiling across kernel-space and user-space

Drive technical excellence through code reviews, architectural discussions, 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