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# Sr. Staff Software Development Engineer

- **Company:** Zscaler, Inc.
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States
- **Experience:** Expert
- **Salary:** $180,000.0 - $225,000.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Microsoft Windows, Artificial Intelligence, Audio Video Distribution, C++ (Programming Language), Cloud Computing, Software Debugging, Desktop Virtualization, Microsoft Exchange Server, Internet Security, Inter-Process Communication, Virtual Private Networks (VPN), Machine Learning, Citrix Systems, Zero Trust Network Access, Session Management, Software Engineering, Subsystems, VMware Horizon View, WinDBg, Diagnostic Tools, Multithreading, Process Monitor, Data Lakes, Data Management, Data Pipelines, Windows Client
- **Published:** October 27, 2026
- **Apply:** https://www.careerbuilder.com/job-details/sr-staff-software-development-engineer-san-francisco-ca--82931376-cc4f-4ed2-bc29-4ac2b1000850

## About the Role

Software Development, Software Engineering, Cloud Computing, Microsoft Exchange Server, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Lake, Power Amplifier, Internet Security, Desktop Virtualization, Data Management, * Foundational understanding of AI/ML technologies and experience leveraging, securing, or positioning AI-driven solutions to optimize outcomes within your functional domain

 * 8+ years of production software engineering experience with strong C++ (C++14/17) expertise
 * Solid grasp of Windows internals including services, user sessions, security tokens, IPC, and process/thread lifetime
 * Experience debugging multithreaded C++ including races, deadlocks, iterator invalidation, and use-after-free
 * Proficiency with diagnostic tools like WinDbg, ETW, Process Monitor, and crash dump analysis
 * Track record of shipping and maintaining an enterprise desktop or endpoint product

What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications)

 * Deep background in networking, VPN, ZTNA, or secure tunneling architectures
 * Experience with RPC (MS-RPC or custom), named pipes, or COM
 * Familiarity with VDI platforms (Citrix, VMware Horizon, AVD), installer/updater flows, or kernel-mode components

## Description

We are looking for a Senior Staff Software Development Engineer to join our team. This is a San Jose, CA role, reporting to the Director, Software Development Engineering in the Zero Trust Exchange department. We are hiring a Senior Staff Software Development Engineer to drive the evolution of our Client Connector Agent (CCA), a critical Windows client that provides secure connectivity, tunneling, and session management across enterprise and VDI environments. In this role, you will own core service-layer components including RPC, user session handling, and data pipelines to ensure CCA remains performant, scalable, resilient, and maintainable.

What you'll do (Role Expectations)

 * Design and implement features across the CCA service, user-mode UI, and supporting subsystems including the RPC server, session handler, data handler, and tunnel telemetry
 * Diagnose and fix complex production issues such as service crashes, race conditions, lifetime bugs, and cross-process synchronization problems
 * Improve reliability of long-running Windows service code including cleanup/shutdown paths and inter-process communication
 * Work on VDI-specific flows including ZCC VDI SMB tunnel traffic accounting and session lifecycle management
 * Review peers'' code, raise the quality bar, and mentor other engineers on Windows systems programming

Who You Are (Success Profile)

 * You thrive in ambiguity and see dynamic, complex environments as an opportunity to build meaningful solutions.
 * You act like an owner, driving initiatives forward with passion, integrity, and a strong bias for action.
 * You are a high-trust collaborator who embraces a challenge culture with clear, respectful, and constructive feedback.
 * You are customer-obsessed, grounding engineering decisions in deep empathy to solve real-world problems.
 * You champion simplicity by distilling complex technical concepts into clear, actionable plans.