Sr Director, AI Engineering

Office - San Jose, USAfull timeRemote

Apply on Employer Site

senior

$264k–$330k

H1B: yes

Zscaler The Sr Director, AI Engineering at Zscaler leads the AI Engineering department, setting enterprise AI technical strategy and owning the engineering of core harness ecosystem components. This role manages multiple engineering disciplines to ensure high reliability, scalability, and performance of AI capabilities.

Responsibilities

Own enterprise AI technical strategy and drive the multi-quarter roadmap for the harness ecosystem, including Agent Harness, AI Gateway / MCP routing, and Registry infrastructure
Lead and unify Forward Deployed Engineering, Machine Learning, AI Platform Engineering, and AI Architecture into a single cohesive engineering organization with shared standards
Ensure end-to-end reliability, uptime, and performance SLAs for the harness ecosystem to seamlessly support all enterprise-wide AI agents
Establish enterprise architecture standards, non-human identity frameworks, and agent design patterns to serve as the single technical voice for Gate 2 and committee reviews
Direct machine learning model strategy, evaluation harnesses, and Gateway routing logic to optimize cost and performance trade-offs at scale

Qualification

You think at scaleYou act like an ownerYou champion simplicityYou are a high-trust collaboratorYou are driven by innovation

Required

You think at scale. You connect your day-to-day work to the larger company mission and think globally, building solutions, processes, and teams that are built to last and support a high-growth organization.
You act like an owner. You navigate seamlessly between high-level architectural strategy and hands-on technical execution, taking accountability for platform reliability and delivery.
You champion simplicity. You are skilled at distilling complex machine learning concepts, agentic design patterns, and platform infrastructure into clear, simple, and actionable standards.
You are a high-trust collaborator. You partner effectively across strategy, governance, and security teams to align technical delivery with organizational AI maturity goals.
You are driven by innovation. You have a deep curiosity for emerging AI technologies and are energized by solving complex technical challenges to scale agent frameworks and model-routing infrastructure.
Demonstrated curiosity and active exploration of AI tools, with a proven history of integrating new technologies to enhance daily workflows and augment problem-solving
10+ years in engineering leadership managing managers across multiple technical disciplines including platform, ML, and architecture
Demonstrated experience owning a technical strategy or roadmap for an AI or platform engineering organization
Deep technical background in distributed systems, platform engineering, applied ML, or enterprise architecture
Proven track record setting engineering standards and architecture review processes that scale across teams
Experience partnering with non-engineering executive leadership to align technical delivery to a broader operating model
What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications)