Senior Staff Software Development Engineer (C/C++/ Linux / Automation / Networking)

Role

We are looking for a Senior Staff Software Engineer to lead the architecture, design, and development across the ZPA Segmentation, Policy Engine, Micro Tenant, and Datapath teams. In this highly impactful role, you will own critical components of the Central Authority-including policy evaluation, orchestration, and distribution-alongside datapath enforcement.

The ideal candidate brings a deep mastery of C/C++, Linux systems, networking, and high-performance execution. As a technical leader, you will drive architectural vision, mentor engineers, and collaborate across control plane and data plane teams to deliver ultra-low-latency, resilient, and secure access decisions at a global scale.

What You'll Do (Key Responsibilities)

• Architect & Evolve Core Engines: Lead the architectural design and evolution of core policy engine components tasked with evaluating identity- and context-aware policies and orchestrating seamless distribution to global enforcement points
• High-Performance Implementation: Design and implement high-performance, resource-efficient datapath enforcement in C/C++ on Linux, aggressively optimizing for ultra-low latency and maximum throughput
• Scalable Distribution: Develop highly resilient, scalable policy and configuration distribution mechanisms and protocols capable of supporting millions of concurrent endpoints and broker instances
• Drive Production-Grade Quality: Ensure operational excellence through SLO-aware designs, comprehensive observability (metrics, logs, traces), automated testing, canary/gradual rollouts, and serving as an escalation point for complex distributed incidents
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Partner closely with platform, control-plane, and security engineering teams to align on APIs, schemas, and telemetry; lead critical design reviews and drive cross-functional initiatives

Who You Are (Success Profile)

• You Think at Scale: You connect your day-to-day work to the larger company mission and think globally. You build solutions, processes, and architectures that are not just effective today, but are built to last and support a high-growth organization
• You are Driven by Innovation: You possess a deep curiosity for how things work and are energized by solving complex technical hurdles. You believe in the power of technology to accelerate transformation and consistently hunt for more secure, scalable methods
• You are a Problem-Solver: You actively seek out engineering challenges because you are energized by finding solutions, knowing that solving the hardest problems delivers the biggest business and customer impact
• You are Data-Driven: You lean on data and analytics to uncover engineering truths, measure what matters, and guide informed architectural decisions-replacing "I think" with "I know."
• You are a Learner: You have a true growth mindset and never stop developing your technical or leadership skills. You actively seek and implement feedback to become an exceptional collaborator and teammate

What We're Looking For (Minimum Qualifications)

• Experience: 7+ years of professional software development experience specializing in modern C/C++, Linux systems, and low-level performance engineering
• Systems & Architecture: Proven track record of designing, building, and operating highly available, consistent, and partition-tolerant distributed systems (including expertise in replication and rollout strategies)
• Networking Mastery: Solid core networking fundamentals including TCP/UDP, TLS/mTLS, DNS, socket I/O, connection management, and L4-L7 policy concepts
• Security & Zero Trust: Deep understanding of security principles: authentication/authorization frameworks, identity management, certificates/PKI, least privilege models, and micro-segmentation
• Automation & Tooling: High proficiency in Python for building automated test harnesses, CI/CD orchestration, benchmarking, and operational/release tooling
• AI Tool Integration: Demonstrated curiosity and active integration of AI/LLM tools into your daily workflow to augment problem-solving and boost productivity

What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications)

• Deep, practical experience building policy engines, rule evaluators, or custom policy Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) for authorization/segmentation at massive scale
• Direct experience implementing robust reliability controls (such as rate limiting, admission control, and backpressure) along with advanced observability setups
• Practical AI/ML skills applied directly to production engineering, such as automated telemetry/log analysis, anomaly detection, or advanced incident triage automation

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