Software Architect (Full Stack Java)

Zscaler - San Jose, CA

Full-time - Senior

San Jose, CA

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

About the position

The Software Architect position within the Endpoint Engineering team is a hands-on role focused on proposing scalable designs and architectures for features, measuring performance gains, and identifying bottlenecks. The architect will influence engineering leaders to ensure features meet long-term scale expectations and guide optimization strategies, while also promoting performance best practices and authoring key documentation.

Responsibilities

• Propose scalable design and architecture for features.
• Measure and demonstrate performance gains scientifically.
• Identify scale bottlenecks and propose solutions with proof of concepts.
• Influence engineering leaders across the company to ensure features meet long-term scale expectations.
• Guide long-term optimization strategies.
• Provide solutions to improve performance assessment lifecycle in both production and lab environments.
• Promote performance best practices through technical presentations.
• Author portfolio and program-level documents for performance and scale.
• Assess the feasibility of technical feature proposals.

Requirements

• Expert programming skills in Java, coding 50% of the time.
• 15+ years of relevant industry experience with emphasis on performance and scale.
• Experience in large-scale distributed architecture.
• Experience working with highly available products (24/7).
• Experience in root cause analysis of performance bottlenecks in lab and production.

Nice-to-haves

• Knowledge of database fundamentals: SQL, schema, internals (Postgres), ASH (Active Session History).
• Experience with Java samplers or profilers like Visual VM or similar tools.
• Experience in HBase, Hadoop is a plus.
• Agile/Scrum methodology experience.