Senior Principal SWE, Rust Development

About Zscaler

Zscaler is a pioneer and global leader in zero trust security. The world’s largest businesses, critical infrastructure organizations, and government agencies rely on Zscaler to secure users, branches, applications, data & devices, and to accelerate digital transformation initiatives. Distributed across more than 160 data centers globally, the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform combined with advanced AI combats billions of cyber threats and policy violations every day and unlocks productivity gains for modern enterprises by reducing costs and complexity.

Here, impact in your role matters more than title and trust is built on results. 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 champion an “AI Forward, People First” philosophy to help us accelerate and innovate, empowering our people to embrace their potential. If you’re driven by purpose, thrive on solving complex challenges and want to make a positive difference on a global scale, we invite you to bring your talents to Zscaler to help shape the future of cybersecurity.

We are looking for a Senior Principal SWE, Rust Development to join our Platform Convergence Team. This is a hybrid role based in San Jose, CA or Bellevue, WA reporting to the Sr. Director, Software Engineering. Join us to build a new platform from the ground up that can scale hundreds of millions of users with high reliability and low latency. You will design and implement distributed system and core infrastructure components while collaborating closely with various stakeholders.

What you’ll do (Role Expectations)

• 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


• Develop distributed, scalable systems with a 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 profiling tools across kernel-space and user-space


• Engage in code reviews, system design discussions, technical documentation, and mentoring junior engineers

Who You Are (Success Profile)

• You act like an owner, fueling your bias for action with a passion for the mission and navigating seamlessly between high-level strategy and hands-on execution.


• You are a problem-solver who seeks out challenges and is energized by finding solutions to hard problems that deliver the biggest impact.


• You are customer-obsessed, building deep empathy for internal and external customers and anchoring every decision in solving their real-world problems.


• You are driven by innovation and technical curiosity, constantly looking for better, more secure, and scalable ways to accelerate transformation.


• You think at scale, connecting your work to the larger company mission and building solutions that support a high-growth, global organization.

What We’re Looking for (Minimum Qualifications)

• 15+ years of software engineering experience, with extensive experience coding with Rust, particularly in systems programming and async frameworks like Tokio or async-std


• Proven expertise in building resilient, observable, and horizontally scalable distributed systems


• Strong understanding of Linux fundamentals, including networking, namespaces, sockets, and kernel-user space interaction


• Proficiency in container-based environments, Git, CI/CD workflows, and performance instrumentation

What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications)

• Experience with systems languages like C/C++ or Go, particularly in performance-critical environments


• Familiarity with Linux networking stacks, kernel-space technologies such as eBPF or DPDK, and Kubernetes networking or service meshes


• Hands-on experience with gRPC, Protobufs, and L2–L4 networking protocols including TCP/IP, QUIC, or routing encapsulations

#LI-JM1 #LI-Hybrid

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:

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.