Principal DevOps Engineer

<div class="content-intro"><p>About <strong>Zscaler</strong></p> <p>Zscaler accelerates digital transformation to ensure our customers can be more agile, efficient, resilient, and secure. As an <strong>AI-forward enterprise</strong>, we are constantly pushing the envelope, leveraging the world’s largest security data lake to power our cloud-native Zero Trust Exchange platform. This innovation protects our customers from cyberattacks and data loss by securely connecting users, devices, and applications in any location.</p> <p>Here, <strong>impact in your role matters more than title</strong> and trust is built on results. We say, impact over activity. We seek innovators who actively use AI to amplify their impact and who thrive in an environment where we leverage intelligent systems to stay ahead of evolving threats. We believe in transparency and value <strong>constructive, honest debate</strong>—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 <strong>customer obsession</strong>, collaboration, ownership, and accountability.</p> <p>We value high-impact, high-accountability with a sense of urgency where you’re enabled to do your best work and embrace your potential. If you’re driven by purpose, thrive on solving complex challenges, and want to be part of the team that’s helping to secure the AI age, we invite you to bring your talents to Zscaler and help shape the future of cybersecurity.</p></div><p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>Role</strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We are looking for a Principal DevOps Engineer to join our Zero Trust Exchange team.This is a hybrid role based in San Jose, CA 3 days a week, reporting to the Sr. Manager, Software Engineering. You'll own the day-to-day operational reliability of our Zero Trust Branch platform — building automated onboarding pipelines, maintaining Kubernetes-based infrastructure in AWS (including federal/IL5 environments), and leading on-call incident response through ServiceNow. As we rapidly scale our customer base, you'll be the engineer who ensures our GitOps workflows, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud environments can keep up with that growth.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>What you’ll do (Role Expectations)</strong></span></p> <ul> <li style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Design and automate customer onboarding workflows that reduce provisioning time from days to hours, enabling the team to scale across hundreds of commercial and federal (IL5) tenants</span></li> <li style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Own and mature the on-call rotation and incident management process in ServiceNow — defining runbooks, escalation paths, and SLOs that drive mean-time-to-resolution down and keep platform availability above target</span></li> <li style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Build and maintain GitOps-driven CI/CD pipelines using GitLab and ArgoCD to enable safe, repeatable deployments to production Kubernetes clusters, minimizing human error and accelerating release velocity</span></li> <li style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Proactively identify and eliminate infrastructure reliability risks through monitoring, capacity planning, and automated remediation — catching problems before customers feel them</span></li> <li style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Establish operational standards and documentation that enable the broader engineering team to self-serve deployments and troubleshooting, reducing bottlenecks on the DevOps team as the organization scales</span></li> </ul> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>Who You Are (Success Profile)</strong></span></p> <ul> <li style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">You act like an owner. Your passion for the mission fuels your bias for action. You operate with integrity because you genuinely care about the outcome. You adapt to what’s needed, navigating seamlessly between high-level strategy and hands-on execution.</span></li> <li style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">You are a high-trust collaborator. You are ambitious for the team, not just yourself. You embrace our challenge culture by giving and receiving ongoing feedback—knowing that candor delivered with clarity and respect is the truest form of teamwork and the fastest way to earn trust.</span></li> <li style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">You are a pragmatic builder. You are obsessed with creating, iterating, and shipping. You aren't afraid to roll up your sleeves and build the first version yourself, balancing the drive for technical excellence with the need to deliver value to users quickly.</span></li> <li style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">You lead with integrity. You do the right thing, even when it’s hard. You hold yourself and others to a high standard of accountability and build trust by matching your words with consistent, transparent action.</span></li> </ul> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>What We’re Looking for (Minimum Qualifications)</strong></span></p> <ul> <li style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">U.S. Citizenship — required for access to federal cloud environments (IL5)</span></li> <li style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Deep hands-on experience with Kubernetes and AWS — you'll be managing production clusters daily, not just dabbling</span></li> <li style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Experience with on-call rotations and incident management workflows — you've carried a pager, written runbooks, and driven postmortems</span></li> </ul> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><strong>What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications)</strong></span></p> <ul> <li style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Experience building CI/CD and GitOps pipelines (GitLab, ArgoCD, Docker, Makefile) — we rely heavily on automated, repeatable deployments and you'd hit the ground running</span></li> <li style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Working knowledge of RDBMS/SQL and SSO (SAML/OIDC) — these come up constantly in onboarding and troubleshooting, so familiarity means fewer ramp-up surprises</span></li> <li style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Exposure to OpenTelemetry (OTEL), CloudFuse, or NIAP/IL5 certification processes — understanding these gives you a head start in our federal environment and observability stack</span></li> </ul> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">#LI-CM3&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">#LI-Hybrid</span></p><div class="content-pay-transparency"><div class="pay-input"><div class="description"><p>Zscaler’s salary ranges are benchmarked and are determined by role and level. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations and could be higher or lower based on a multitude of factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.</p> <p>The base salary range listed for this full-time position excludes commission/ bonus/ equity (if applicable) + benefits.</p></div><div class="title">Base Pay Range</div><div class="pay-range"><span>$185,500</span><span class="divider">&mdash;</span><span>$265,000 USD</span></div></div></div><div class="content-conclusion"><p data-pm-slice="1 3 []">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.</p> <p>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:</p> <div class="has-nudge" data-nudge-id="5eb9419b-6a4d-4451-bfa6-e2eb96084be0"> <ul> <li>Various health plans</li> <li>Time off plans for vacation and sick time</li> <li>Parental leave options</li> <li>Retirement options</li> <li>Education reimbursement</li> <li>In-office perks, and more!</li> </ul> <div class="has-nudge" data-nudge-id="5eb9419b-6a4d-4451-bfa6-e2eb96084be0"> <p data-pm-slice="1 1 []">Learn more about Zscaler's hybrid working model and benefits&nbsp;<a href="https://www.zscaler.com/candidate-resource-hub" target="_blank">here</a>.</p> </div> </div> <p>By applying for this role, you adhere to applicable laws, regulations, and Zscaler policies, including those related to security and privacy standards and guidelines.</p> <p class="p1">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. <em>See more information by clicking on the </em><a href="https://www.eeoc.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/22-088_EEOC_KnowYourRights6.12ScreenRdr.pdf"><em>Know Your Rights: Workplace Discrimination is Illegal </em></a><em>link.</em></p> <p>Pay Transparency</p> <p>Zscaler complies with all applicable federal, state, and local pay transparency rules.</p> <p>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.</p></div>