Principal Data Scientist

About Zscaler

Serving thousands of enterprise customers around the world including 45% of Fortune 500 companies, Zscaler (NASDAQ: ZS) was founded in 2007 with a mission to make the cloud a safe place to do business and a more enjoyable experience for enterprise users. As the operator of the world’s largest security cloud, Zscaler accelerates digital transformation so enterprises can be more agile, efficient, resilient, and secure. The pioneering, AI-powered Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange™ platform, which is found in our SASE and SSE offerings, protects thousands of enterprise customers from cyberattacks and data loss by securely connecting users, devices, and applications in any location.

Named a Best Workplace in Technology by Fortune and others, Zscaler fosters an inclusive and supportive culture that is home to some of the brightest minds in the industry. If you thrive in an environment that is fast-paced and collaborative, and you are passionate about building and innovating for the greater good, come make your next move with Zscaler.

Responsibilities

As organizations increasingly embrace AI, our new product is designed to help them do so safely, securely, and responsibly. It provides a trusted platform that supports both user-driven and agentic AI—empowering individuals to harness AI for insights and productivity, while enabling autonomous agents to act within clearly defined ethical and operational boundaries. Built with enterprise-grade security, compliance, and transparency at its core, the product ensures that data privacy and governance are never compromised.

We’re looking for a Principal Data Scientist reporting into our Senior Director, Software Engineering. This is a green field opportunity to define and build a new class of market defining products. This is a remote position within the United States. In this role, you will:

• Design, build, and implement machine learning models, including SLMs/LLMs, to enhance the intelligence and functionality of Zscaler’s internal and external platforms.
• Conduct research and development in sophisticated AI/ML areas such as generative AI, predictive analytics, and anomaly detection.
• Analyze complex datasets to extract key insights, continuously refining model accuracy and performance.
• Collaborate with engineering and product teams to effectively integrate AI/ML technologies into Zscaler’s core solutions.
• Stay current with advancements in ML, AI, and cybersecurity, applying specific knowledge of underlying frameworks and methodologies to ensure technical excellence.

Minimum Qualifications

• Possess an advanced degree (PhD preferred) in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related field, combined with a strong understanding of ML algorithms, deep learning, neural networks, and their applications.
• Demonstrated experience (3-5+ years) in applying diverse data science models and advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques for large-scale data analysis.
• Proficiency in Python and SQL, with hands-on experience using key ML frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch).
• Skilled in data manipulation, visualization, and analysis techniques and tools.
• Proven ability to independently solve complex problems and collaborate effectively within a team environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Possess a strong foundation in mathematics and statistics, applying these to ML and AI, with hands-on experience in large generative models for text and image.
• Proficient in cloud computing platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), big data technologies (Hadoop, Spark), and data engineering principles, including SQL and NoSQL databases.
• Expertise in deploying scalable machine learning models to production environments, complemented by knowledge of advanced AI protocols such as A2A, Agentic AI, and MCP.