Director of AI Strategy - Engineering Productivity

About Zscaler

Zscaler accelerates digital transformation to ensure our customers can be more agile, efficient, resilient, and secure. As an AI-forward enterprise, we are constantly pushing the envelope, leveraging the world’s largest security data lake to power our cloud-native Zero Trust Exchange platform. This innovation protects our customers from cyberattacks and data loss by securely connecting users, devices, and applications in any location.

Here, impact in your role matters more than title and trust is built on results. We say, impact over activity. We seek innovators who actively use AI to amplify their impact and who thrive in an environment where we leverage intelligent systems to stay ahead of evolving threats. We believe in transparency and value constructive, honest debate—we’re focused on getting to the best ideas, faster. We build high-performing teams that can make an impact quickly and with high quality. To do this, we are building a culture of execution centered on customer obsession, collaboration, ownership, and accountability.

Role

We are looking for a Director of AI Strategy - Engineering Productivity to join our Engineering Operations team. This is a hybrid role based out of our San Jose, CA office (3 days a week in office), reporting to the Senior Director, Technical Program Management, Zero Trust Exchange. In this role, you will define and champion the company's AI strategy for engineering productivity by evaluating, securing, and integrating AI-driven developer tools and CI/CD pipeline enhancements. You will drive widespread engineering efficiency by replacing fragmented team practices with a unified enterprise governance model, measurable business metrics, and a structured budget for AI adoption.

What you’ll do (Role Expectations)

• Define and lead the Enterprise AI Strategy by developing a unified engineering governance model to standardize AI workflows, prompting techniques, and QA frameworks
• Lead the hands-on evaluation, selection, and rollout of AI developer tools while driving consensus to consolidate vendors and manage a dedicated productivity budget
• Architect AI-enhanced CI/CD pipelines by integrating AI agents and advanced automation while establishing business-oriented metrics to measure tangible impact
• Partner cross-functionally with Security and IT teams to ensure all AI tools are deployed safely, addressing data privacy and protecting proprietary codebases
• Exercise cross-functional influence to build consensus around the AI roadmap, moving the company from isolated experimentation into a structured master plan

What We’re Looking for (Minimum Qualifications)

• Proven experience defining and executing an AI strategy specifically focused on engineering productivity
• Deep technical expertise in modern software development lifecycles (SDLC) with hands-on experience evolving CI/CD pipelines using AI agents
• Demonstrated experience navigating enterprise security protocols and partnering with InfoSec teams to deploy AI models safely within an enterprise environment
• Strong strategic thinking and stakeholder management skills with a proven ability to influence leadership and drive a unified master plan across multiple teams

What Will Make You Stand Out (Preferred Qualifications)

• Strong foundational background in DevOps or Platform Engineering
• Experience establishing business-oriented metrics to measure AI ROI and managing dedicated budgets for engineering productivity tools