Principal Production Engineer

We are looking for a Principal Production Engineer to join our team. This role is available as a hybrid opportunity 3 days a week in San Jose, CA or Remote reporting to Production Engineering in the Cloud Infrastructure & Operations department. Join Zscaler to be a force multiplier for the reliability of a global platform processing 200+ billion transactions daily across tens of millions of enterprise users. In this role, you will provide the technical vision and hands‑on execution to drive an automation‑first culture across the company. By maturing our observability and architectural standards, you will directly reduce our Mean Time to Mitigate (MTTM) and shape the scalability of our globally distributed, multi‑cloud infrastructure. What you’ll do (Role Expectations) Design and implement highly available, scalable infrastructure across AWS, GCP, and bare‑metal environments Drive an automation‑first culture by writing code (Python/Go) to eliminate manual toil and build self‑healing systems Implement and maintain sophisticated observability (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry), define SLIs/SLOs, and establish error budgets Act as a lead Incident Commander (TDO on‑call), develop response playbooks, and conduct deep‑Dive post‑incident analyses Partner with Engineering and partner teams to conduct operability reviews Who You Are (Success Profile) You act like an owner with a bias for action and integrity. You are a pragmatic builder obsessed with creating, iterating, and shipping. You champion simplicity by distilling complex problems into clear, actionable plans. You are data‑driven, valuing evidence over assumptions. You think at scale, building solutions and processes built to last a high‑growth global organization. What We’re Looking for (Minimum Qualifications) 10+ years of experience managing reliability, scalability, and availability for large‑scale production services Deep expertise in programming (e.g., Python, Go, or C/C++) Strong background in networking protocols, Linux/RHEL systems, and distributed architecture Experience in high‑stakes incident management and participation in a 24/7 on‑call rotation Proficiency in leveraging ITIL frameworks and incident data to drive service maturity through systematic problem management and technical operability reviews What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications) Extensive experience with public cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) and Infrastructure‑as‑Code (Ansible, Terraform, Helm, Temporal) Experience with chaos engineering and disaster recovery planning at scale Expertise in global routing (BGP) and traffic tunneling (GRE, IPSec) with a deep understanding of L7 proxy architectures (HAProxy), DNS at scale, and OS networking stack internals Base Pay Range: $164,500 — $235,000 USD Benefits Various health plans Time off plans for vacation and sick time Parental leave options Retirement options Education reimbursement In‑office perks, and more! Equal Employment Opportunity 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. Pay Transparency Zscaler complies with all applicable federal, state, and local pay transparency rules. Accommodations 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. #J-18808-Ljbffr