Senior Staff AI Engineer

Zscaler, Inc.; San Jose (CA); Hybrid; USD 107,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k)

Dental insurance

Flexible schedule

Retirement plan

Job summary

Zscaler, Inc. is seeking a Senior Staff AI Engineer to lead two IT AI/ML Engineering groups in a hybrid setup.

You will own platform architecture, roadmap, and delivery for shared AI services and AI-powered experiences, including LLM gateways, routing, and enterprise AI tools. You will manage distributed teams across the US and India, drive high-quality code, and establish governance for cost, latency, and evaluation.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years building production ML services.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 3+ years as a technical lead delivering, across time zones and with contractors.
• Strong full‑stack skills: Python and TypeScript/Node.js (or Java/Go), React, API design.
• Practical LLM application experience: prompt design, retrieval augmented generation, agents, routing.
• Experience with evaluation and observability for AI systems: test sets, regression, cost/latency tracking.
• Cloud/DevOps: AWS/GCP/Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, monitoring, canary/rollback.
• Production service experience: on-call, incident response, runbooks, L2 escalation.
• Clear communication to align priorities with leaders and partners.

Responsibilities

• Lead the AI platform group, owning architecture, roadmap, and delivery for shared services.
• Lead AI solutions and support group, delivering AI-powered help and search experiences and admin platforms.
• Coordinate a distributed team across the US and India with planning and reviews.
• Convert business requests into prioritized work and manage risks and status updates.
• Stay hands-on with APIs, services, front-end/back-end code, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Set quality gates for AI solutions and establish cost and latency targets.
• Run operations to reduce tickets, lead incident response, and track platform cost and reliability.
• Collaborate with Sales, Support, Finance, Security, Privacy, and Legal on data handling and approvals.
• Mentor engineers, manage contractor performance, and share best practices.

Skills

AI/ML engineering

Full-stack development

Python

TypeScript/Node.js

React

Cloud platforms

API design

Communication

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science/Engineering

Tools

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

GCP

Azure

Job description

Zscaler is seeking a Senior Staff AI Engineer to lead two IT AI/ML engineering groups within a hybrid team. The role combines hands-on engineering with distributed leadership, focusing on shared AI platform services as well as AI-powered help, search, enterprise AI administration, and L2 support.

Role Overview

You will lead two groups in IT AI/ML Engineering: one focused on a shared AI platform and one delivering AI solutions plus L2 support. Responsibilities include owning platform architecture and roadmap for core capabilities such as LLM gateways and routing, AI cost controls, observability and evaluation, and long-term memory and context. You will also define quality and release gates for AI-powered help and search, and for enterprise AI tool administration.

Responsibilities

• Lead the AI platform group by owning architecture, roadmap, and delivery for shared services including LLM gateways and model routing, AI cost optimization, observability and evaluation, an internal catalog of agents and skills, and long-term memory and context for AI applications.
• Lead the AI solutions and support group by owning delivery and quality for AI-powered help and search experiences, including rollout and administration of enterprise AI platforms and the L2 support model with triage, escalation, runbooks, and training workshops.
• Anchor a distributed team by coordinating with engineers and contractors across the US and India, bridging time zones through planning and reviews, and ensuring context and decisions flow in both directions.
• Plan and prioritize by converting business requests into a clear priority order, balancing team capacity, flagging risks early, and reporting status to engineering leadership and stakeholders.
• Stay hands-on by designing and reviewing APIs, services, front-end and back-end code, and CI/CD pipelines, while unblocking engineers and setting standards for code quality, testing, and documentation.
• Set the quality bar for AI solutions through release gates, regression checks, and cost and latency targets using evaluation and observability tooling, in coordination with teams owning model and agent selection and tuning.
• Run operations well by reducing repeat support tickets through automation and documentation, leading incident response and postmortems, and tracking platform cost, usage, and reliability.
• Partner across the company by collaborating with sales, support, and finance business owners, and with Security, Privacy, and Legal on data handling, access controls, and approvals.
• Grow the team by mentoring engineers, managing contractor performance, supporting hiring, and sharing best practices through documentation and workshops.

Requirements

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years building production applications with LLMs or other ML services.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• 3+ years as a technical lead (or equivalent), leading engineers on shared deliverables, ideally across time zones and with contractors.
• Strong full-stack skills including Python and TypeScript/Node.js (or Java/Go), a modern front-end framework such as React, and solid API design.
• Practical LLM application experience including prompt and tool design, retrieval-augmented generation, agents and function calling or MCP, and gateways or routing layers.
• Experience with evaluation and observability for AI systems, including test sets, regression suites, LLM-as-judge, tracing, and cost and latency tracking.
• Cloud and DevOps skills with AWS (or GCP/Azure), Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD, including monitoring, canary and rollback practice.
• Production service experience including on-call, incident response, runbooks, and L2 escalation.
• Clear communication with a proven ability to manage priorities and expectations with leaders and business partners.

Technologies

• Python, TypeScript, Node.js, Java, Go
• React
• LLM gateways, MCP, retrieval-augmented generation
• AWS, GCP, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD
• LLM-as-judge, tracing

Benefits

• 401(k)
• Dental insurance
• Flexible schedule
• Retirement plan

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience administering enterprise AI platforms and vendor accounts (such as Claude, OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, or Vertex), including usage controls and cost governance.
• Experience with vector and graph databases, and with agent memory and context management.
• Experience building search or help experiences, Slack bots and web widgets integrated with AI services.
• Familiarity with model inference, fine-tuning, and open-weight models (helpful but not required).
• Experience running enablement such as workshops, documentation, and internal training for AI tools.
• Experience in regulated environments such as FedRAMP.

Team, Location and Compensation

• Team: IT AI/ML Engineering. You will lead two groups and work closely with the group that builds agents and models. Day-to-day work includes Python, TypeScript, AWS, Kubernetes, LLM gateways, and evaluation tooling.
• Location: Hybrid, three days per week in San Jose, CA or Bellevue, WA. Remote within the US may be considered for exceptional candidates.
• Compensation: USD 107,000 - 130,000 per year.
• Work Location: Hybrid remote in San Jose, CA 95139.