Principal Software Development Engineer (Microservices)

The job

LIVE Employer public job feed (private-sector employer) Source: the employer's public careers feed · Data: listed 2026-10-08

Job description

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 Principal Software Development Engineer (Microservices) to join our team. This is a hybrid role (in Santa Clara, CA office, minimum 3 days per week), reporting to the Senior Director, Software Development Engineering in the Engineering ZIA Core department. You will work on the control plane for the Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) product, helping evolve the platform to meet massive scale with cloud-native, microservices-based architecture.

What you’ll do (Role Expectations)

• Lead the technical roadmap to modernize the ZIA control plane using API-first, domain-aligned microservices with clear service ownership and multi-region architectures (active-active, failover, disaster recovery)
• Design, develop, and operate low-latency, event-driven services end to end (API through storage) utilizing resilience patterns, progressive delivery (blue/green, canary, feature flags), GitOps workflows (Argo CD/Flux), and safe rollout/rollback strategies
• Drive engineering excellence through standards, code reviews, testing, paved-road patterns, API and event contract governance (versioning, consumer-driven contracts, schema registry, DLQs), and cross-functional partnerships across Product, SRE, Security, Data, and Architecture while representing designs in customer/partner forums
• Own service reliability and operability end to end, including SLI/SLOs (p95/p99 latency, availability), SLO-based alerting, error budgets, incident response, postmortems, and advanced observability with distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry, Jaeger/Tempo) and structured logging
• Embed microservices security (OAuth2/OIDC, mTLS, service-to-service authZ, KMS/Vault), supply-chain integrity (SBOM, SLSA), performance optimization, capacity planning, and cloud spend/autoscaling across AWS primitives

Who You Are (Success Profile)

• You thrive in ambiguity and are comfortable building the path as you walk it, viewing unstructured environments as raw material to build something meaningful.
• You act like an owner with a passion for the mission, operating with integrity, a bias for action, and the agility to navigate between high-level strategy and hands-on execution.
• You are a problem-solver who is energized by complex technical challenges and driven to deliver high-impact solutions.
• You are a high-trust collaborator who builds strong team relationships, embracing continuous feedback, candor, and respect to earn trust and achieve shared goals.
• You are a learner with a growth mindset, constantly seeking feedback and developing your skills with purpose to become a stronger teammate.

What We’re Looking for (Minimum Qualifications)

• Foundational understanding of AI/ML technologies and experience leveraging, securing, or positioning AI-driven solutions to optimize outcomes within your functional domain
• 12+ years in software development with 4+ years building and operating production microservices at significant scale, including proficiency in Go
• Deep experience with distributed systems and messaging (Kafka preferred; SQS/RabbitMQ acceptable), alongside patterns such as CQRS and Event Sourcing where fit-for-purpose
• Kubernetes in AWS at scale (EKS preferred), strong Docker fundamentals, Infrastructure-as-Code, and GitOps workflows
• Strong SQL (PostgreSQL/MySQL/Amazon RDS/Aurora) and NoSQL (Cassandra/MongoDB/DynamoDB) design and scaling with familiarity with multi-region data trade-offs, alongside performance engineering and cost optimization in AWS
• Comprehensive reliability and security experience including SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, metrics (Prometheus), tracing (OpenTelemetry), SLO-based alerting, incident management, postmortems, service mesh (Istio/Linkerd), mTLS, OAuth2/OIDC, and secrets management (KMS/Vault)

What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications)

• Proven ability to leverage AI technologies and workflows to drive measurable operational efficiency
• Chaos engineering, advanced load/performance testing, fault injection, and disaster recovery drills combined with multi-region design expertise (active-active, partitioning, replication, eventual consistency) and migration leadership (strangler patterns, domain decomposition)
• Event contract governance (Avro/Protobuf with schema registry), DLQ processing strategies, and data replay tooling
• OSS contributions, technical talks, patents, or published design writing

#LI-KM #LI-Hybrid

Zscaler’s salary ranges are benchmarked and are determined by role and level. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations and could be higher or lower based on a multitude of factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

The base salary range listed for this full-time position excludes commission/ bonus/ equity (if applicable) + benefits.

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.

Explore around this job

Field: Technology Sub-niche: Software engineering All jobs at Zscaler Jobs in California Jobs in Santa Clara, CA Santa Clara city guide California state guide Santa Clara County economy

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About the role

This is a — role in the Technology field (Software engineering) at Zscaler.

We could not match this job title to one occupation in the official wage statistics, so no pay estimate is shown. Pay is not in the source listing; ask the employer for the range and compare in the 240 job niches.

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How to prepare and behave

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• Read the whole description and match your examples to its requirements; use the same words the posting uses where they are true for you.
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The city

The job is in Santa Clara, CA. Below is what the official statistics say about living and working there.

How Santa Clara compares. Among the 145 largest places in California, Santa Clara is #46 by population, #11 for long commutes (#1 = fewest), #133 for homeownership (#1 = highest), #17 for household income (#1 = highest). Its county, Santa Clara County, is #1 of 58 counties for average pay ($197,043).

The place in numbers

Santa Clara has 130,256 residents (ACS 2020–2024), about 0.3% of the population of California. It covers 18 square miles of land, which works out to roughly 7,127 people per square mile. The median age is 34.6, 9% younger than the state median (34.6 against 37.9).

Housing

The median gross rent is $3,016 a month (rent plus utilities), 48% above the state median ($3,016 against $2,036). Over a year that is 20.2% of the median household income. US housing guidance treats housing as affordable when it takes 30% of income or less, so the typical household is under that line. The median home value is $1,582,600, which is 8.8 times the median household income ($178,958); a ratio above 5 usually means buying is out of reach without savings or a second income. 40.8% of households own their home, 27% below the state average (40.8% against 55.9%). A low ownership share points to a rental-heavy market with more apartments and shorter stays.

Work and pay

The San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA metropolitan area has 1,134,970 jobs in the BLS wage survey, and the median pay across all occupations is $84,050 a year, 65% above the national median ($84,050 against $50,980). The biggest occupation groups are computer and mathematical (149,970 jobs, median $186,320); management (115,110 jobs, median $210,750); business and financial operations (94,210 jobs, median $125,240). The area is most specialised in computer and mathematical (3.9 times) and architecture and engineering (2.5 times), where the share of workers is well above the national share. The best-paying groups with at least 5,000 jobs are management ($210,750) and legal ($195,190). In 2026M09 the unemployment rate of Santa Clara County was 4.2%. 72.2% of residents aged 16 and over are in the labour force. The city lies in Santa Clara County; its jobs, pay by industry and GDP are on the county page.

Getting around

Among workers, 58.2% drive alone, 2.5% use public transit, 2.8% walk, 25.7% work from home. 8.9% of workers commute 45 minutes or more, 54% below the state average (8.9% against 19.4%). Remote work is more common than in the state as a whole, which widens the set of employers a resident can work for without moving.

People and education

65.9% of adults aged 25 and over hold a bachelor's degree or higher, 78% above the state share (65.9% against 37.1%). 46.4% of residents were born outside the United States, 72% above the state share (46.4% against 27.0%). The poverty rate is 8.4%, 30% below the state rate (8.4% against 12.0%).

Climate

The warmest month is Aug, averaging 68°F (19.8°C), and the coolest is Jan at 47°F (8.3°C). About 510 mm (20 inches) of precipitation falls in a year; Dec is the wettest month (114 mm) and Jul the driest (0 mm). These values come from NASA satellite-based climatology on a grid of about 50 km, so they describe the wider area, not a weather station in the city.

Nearby cities to compare

Closest cities in this guide: Sunnyvale (4 miles, similar rent); Cupertino (5 miles, rent 16% higher); Campbell (6 miles, rent 9% lower); Milpitas (6 miles, rent 3% higher). Rent differences are against Santa Clara; use the Compare tab to put any two cities side by side.

Full guide to Santa Clara →California guideAll jobs in Santa Clara

Official links for Santa Clara

• Official website of Santa Clara: santaclaraca.gov
• Census Bureau data profile for Santa Clara
• Official website of Santa Clara County: santaclaracounty.gov
• Official state website: ca.gov
• BLS Economy at a Glance: California

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Where to live

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Career paths

We could not match this title to one occupation, so here are the other sub-niches in Technology, where your skills may carry over:

Cybersecurity (713) Data, analytics and AI (3366) Cloud, IT and infrastructure (1040) Product management (836)

Distances

This job has no single city we can place on the map (remote, flexible or unmatched location), so no distance table is shown. Browse all Technology jobs with distances from any of the 20 largest cities.

The employer

Zscaler is the employer in this listing. See all its open jobs here →

We do not hold headcount or revenue for this employer. Check its careers site and, if it is listed on a stock exchange, its public filings (SEC EDGAR search).

What it is like to work at a company (culture, schedules, benefits) is not in the source data, so we do not describe it. Read the description and ask the questions under "How to prepare".

Other open jobs at Zscaler

Similar jobs

Same sub-niche: Software engineering

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FAQ

What is the Principal Software Development Engineer (Microservices) job at Zscaler?

A private-sector role in technology (software engineering) listed 32 days ago. The full description is on this page and on the employer's page.

Where is this job?

Santa Clara, CA.

How do I apply?

Use the "View this job and apply on the employer's page" button. AtiveSite does not receive applications.

How much does it pay?

The listing does not publish pay, and we could not match the title to one official occupation.

What is the cost of living there?

Median rent in Santa Clara is $3,016 a month and median household income $178,958 (ACS 2020–2024).

How old is this listing?

It was posted on 2026-10-08 (32 days ago). Jobs older than 90 days are not shown.

Are there similar jobs?

Yes: browse software engineering jobs in California.

Sources and terms

• Job data: Zscaler careers page public feed (listing dated 2026-10-08). The job disappears from this site when it disappears from the source.
• Wages and projections: BLS OEWS (May 2025) and Employment Projections 2025–35.
• City and county figures: Census Bureau ACS 2020–2024, BEA, BLS QCEW and LAUS, NASA POWER climatology; distances from Census Gazetteer coordinates.

AtiveSite is not affiliated with or endorsed by the employer or any government agency, and does not process applications. Verify every detail with the employer before acting.

Sources

• BLS OEWS (wages and employment by occupation, May 2025)
• BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
• BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics
• BLS JOLTS
• BLS State and Metro Area Employment
• Census Bureau American Community Survey (via Census Reporter)
• BEA GDP by state and Regional Price Parities
• IRS 2026 tax adjustments
• U.S. Department of Labor, minimum wage by state
• Tax Foundation state income tax rates 2026
• USAJOBS
• USCIS
• U.S. Department of State, visas
• NASA POWER climatology
• GeoNames / Census Gazetteer (coordinates)