Staff Software Development Engineer - AI Engineer

Role

We are looking for an AI Engineer to join our team. This is a Hybrid role, reporting to the Engineering Manager in the Product Operations department.

We are seeking a hands-on AI Engineer to help scale the agentic layer of our AI Native - Product Operations Platform. In this role, you will design and build production-grade AI systems, reusable platform capabilities, and the engineering harnesses required to safely develop, evaluate, debug, and operate AI workflows at scale. As a pragmatic builder who understands modern AI systems in practice, you will translate ambiguous business needs into scalable technical solutions in a high-velocity environment.

What you’ll do (Role Expectations)

• Build and scale the agentic layer of the AI Native - Product Operations Platform by designing production-grade AI systems, reusable platform capabilities, and reliable execution patterns
• Develop Agentic AI capabilities by applying practical knowledge of RAG architectures, embeddings, vector retrieval, agent orchestration, and workflow state management
• Design and implement AI engineering harnesses for prompt testing, agent debugging, workflow replay, evaluation, regression testing, tracing, and controlled experimentation
• Build and maintain graph-based agent workflows, including multi-step reasoning flows, tool-calling paths, branching logic, human-in-the-loop checkpoints, and stateful execution patterns
• Implement standards, patterns, and guardrails to ensure AI development on the platform remains scalable, reliable, observable, and cohesive

Who You Are (Success Profile)

• You are a pragmatic builder with a passion for rolling up your sleeves to create, iterate, and ship production-grade software.
• You thrive in ambiguity and fast-paced environments, maintaining focus and execution velocity amidst rapid change.
• You act like an owner, bringing deep accountability, a strong bias for action, and end-to-end execution to every project.
• You are a high-trust collaborator who excels at partnering with cross-functional teams to translate business needs into technical solutions.
• You champion simplicity, with a proven ability to distill complex technical problems and AI architectures into clean, actionable plans.

What We’re Looking for (Minimum Qualifications)

• 5+ years of industry experience with at least 2-3 years focused on building or working with AI development harnesses, including test harnesses, evaluation pipelines, workflow replay tools, tracing, observability, and prompt or agent regression testing
• Proven experience building and deploying agentic AI systems, RAG architectures, embeddings, and vector retrieval systems in production environments
• Familiarity with prompt engineering, orchestration patterns, agent workflows, graph-based execution models, and evaluation frameworks or guardrails
• Practical understanding of agentic loops, including planning, retrieval, tool execution, validation, retry handling, reflection, and termination criteria

What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications)

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• Hands-on software engineering experience with FastAPI, NextJS, and Postgres, including building application stacks end-to-end
• Experience operating in a high-velocity delivery environment with a track record of supporting frequent or weekly feature releases
• Proven ability to design AI systems optimized for low cost, high throughput, extensibility, observability, and long-term scalability

#LI-KM8

#LI-Hybrid

• 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.

Pay Transparency

Zscaler complies with all applicable federal, state, and local pay transparency rules.