RoleWe are looking for a Principal GenAI Data Engineer to join our team. This is a Hybrid role based in Santa Clara, CA or Bellevue, WA (3 days in office), reporting to the Senior Manager, Enterprise AI Data Platform in the Information Technology Data Strategy department.
We are seeking an experienced technical leader to drive the design and implementation of enterprise-grade Generative AI data ingestion, knowledge preparation, and platform architectures that enable scalable, production-ready GenAI applications. This role focuses on architecting robust pipelines and platforms for ingesting, processing, governing, and serving structured and unstructured enterprise data for AI/LLM workloads. The ideal candidate combines deep expertise in enterprise data architecture, unstructured data pipelines, GenAI platform engineering, and strong software engineering skills in Python.
What You'll Do- Architect enterprise-scale GenAI data platforms for ingestion, transformation, enrichment, and serving of structured and unstructured data
- Design scalable pipelines for enterprise knowledge ingestion from diverse data sources including documents, SaaS platforms, knowledge bases, collaboration tools, and databases
- Define architecture for metadata extraction, chunking, enrichment, embeddings generation, and knowledge preparation workflows
- Design AI-ready data models and storage strategies for vector, graph, and hybrid knowledge systems
- Architect scalable unstructured data processing pipelines for text, images, PDFs, tables, and multimodal content
Who You Are- You're comfortable building the path as you walk it. You thrive in a dynamic environment, seeing ambiguity not as a hindrance, but as the raw material to build something meaningful.
- Your passion for the mission fuels your bias for action. You operate with integrity because you genuinely care about the outcome. True ownership involves leveraging dynamic range: the ability to navigate seamlessly between high-level strategy and hands-on execution.
- You love running towards the challenges because you are laser-focused on finding the solution, knowing that solving the hard problems delivers the biggest impact.
- 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.
- You have a true growth mindset and are obsessed with your own development, actively seeking feedback to become a better partner and a stronger teammate. You love what you do and you do it with purpose.
What We're Looking For- Foundational understanding of AI/ML technologies and experience leveraging, securing, or positioning AI-driven solutions to optimize outcomes within your functional domain
- Expert-level Python programming and software engineering capabilities
- Experience building distributed/scalable data pipelines for AI workloads
- Strong understanding of unstructured data extraction and processing pipelines
- Experience with vector databases, graph databases, and metadata/knowledge storage systems
- Hands-on experience with clustering, entity recognition algorithms, and modern retrieval strategies (including RAG, search, and agentic AI workflows)
What Will Make You Stand Out- Advanced experience architecting real-time distributed vector search infrastructure and multi-modal knowledge graph pipelines for enterprise-grade Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) applications
- Experience with LLMOps / GenAIOps frameworks such as LangSmith, Evaluation Framework like Arize Phoenix, Weights & Biases, or MLflow
- Familiarity with Agent Frameworks like LangGraph, CrewAI, or Google ADK
#LI-YC2 #LI-Hybrid
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.
The base salary range listed for this full-time position excludes commission/ bonus/ equity (if applicable) + benefits.
Base Pay Range
$185,500-$265,000 USD
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:
- Various health plans
- Time off plans for vacation and sick time
- Parental leave options
- Retirement options
- Education reimbursement
- In-office perks, and more!
Learn more about Zscaler's hybrid working model and benefits here.
