Zscaler
Zscaler Company Culture & Values
Frequently Asked Questions
At Zscaler, our culture isn't just a list of words on a wall—it’s the engine that powers the people that drive the world's largest security cloud. We are a destination for top talent, focused on empowering employees to do their best work in service of our mission.
Our cultural DNA is rooted in five core values: Teamwork, Ownership, Passion, Innovation, and Customer Obsession. But values only matter when they are put into action. Our "Ways of Working" provide additional clarity on how we behave every day:
- Ownership and Collaboration: We empower every individual to act like an owner, blending strategic thinking with adaptable support to drive collective team success.
- Trust Through Outcomes and Impact: Here trust is built by delivering results and maintaining integrity, not by rank or tenure.
- A Challenge Culture with Ongoing Feedback: We prize candor over office politics. We believe effective execution thrives on honest, constructive conversations that challenge conventional ideas and align us toward shared goals.
We cultivate collaboration, alignment and high performance through our flexible work arrangements that blend global remote collaboration with intentional in-office connection. Our hybrid approach ensures that when we come together in our regional hubs, it is purposeful—focused on high-energy brainstorming, complex problem-solving, and strengthening our community—while still honoring the deep focus and flexibility our people need.
You can see this culture of trust and execution in action every day. For instance, in our summer internship program, interns don't just sit on the sidelines—they jump directly into business-critical projects and build actual code that becomes part of the Zscaler platform protecting real customers. Similarly, our Site Reliability Engineers (SREs), who keep our global cloud running 24/7 consistently cite our "culture of ownership" as a big motivator. They are empowered to proactively re-architect solutions in addition to repairing immediate problems.
Crucially, we actively invest in employee growth. We treat career development as an ongoing journey where you are in the driver’s seat. Supported by our virtual Career Hub and internal mobility program, you’ll find tools to deepen your skills or explore beyond your current scope. It’s why 71% of our employees report seeing tangible, high-quality opportunities to advance their careers here.
Ultimately, life at Zscaler is about being passionate about the mission. Whether you are building the product in engineering or taking it to market in sales, if you want a career where you are trusted to innovate, challenged to grow, and supported by a world-class global team, you will find your home here.
At Zscaler, recognition is a daily practice and the cornerstone of a culture where high-performers want to stay, grow, and thrive. We believe that when people feel valued, they contribute more and collaborate better, delivering impact that is rewarded and celebrated.
Because we expect everyone to take ownership of our culture, recognition doesn’t just come from leadership–we encourage everyone to celebrate successes and acknowledge achievement. Through our internal Recognition Hub on The Exchange, any employee can easily give real-time kudos to a peer anywhere in the world.
Employees can recognize peers for demonstrating our TOPIC Values (Teamwork, Ownership, Passion, Innovation, Customer Obsession) and HUMAN Leadership Principles, as well as unique cultural pillars like "Culture Ambassador" and "Inclusion Advocate." Once posted on the platform, employees are awarded an electronic badge to be displayed on their profile, and the recognition is published in our global newsfeed. From there, the entire company can view, comment, and "cheer" to amplify the gratitude across our global teams.
We also know that exceptional execution deserves tangible appreciation. Work that drives specific, high-impact business outcomes that go well beyond standard responsibilities, can be recognized with a Zscaler Spot Award. Managers are empowered to nominate team members for monetary awards to recognize out-of-the-box problem solving and remarkable accomplishments. (For our Sales organization, we feature dedicated Impact Awards to ensure those massive revenue milestones are equally celebrated.)
Finally, we also equip managers and peers with materials to publicly celebrate "moments that matter" on platforms like LinkedIn. Whether we are welcoming you as a new hire, celebrating a hard-earned promotion, or honoring a milestone anniversary, we blend memorable internal celebrations with external social recognition to keep our people front and center.
Recognition at Zscaler is about visibility and impact. When you drive real business outcomes, your hard work doesn't go unnoticed. We’ve built the tools and programs to ensure your contributions are recognized.
Zscaler Employee Perspectives
How does your culture influence hiring and retention as you grow?
We’re very deliberate about how we foster our culture. At Zscaler, culture means defining what success looks like through our daily behaviors and making sure it’s reflected in our work processes and practices. If we’re doing it right, candidates should experience our culture not only as content on our website, but through the interview and onboarding process and everything that comes after. Culture certainly influences who we welcome into our organization, but our people also influence our culture — it’s a two-way street. We study our best leaders and high performers to understand what makes them successful so we can replicate that in our culture.
Can you share an example of how your team recognizes or celebrates one another’s contributions?
Recognition is one of our cultural tenets — when people feel valued and appreciated, that’s one of the hallmarks of a successful culture. Whether it’s from a leader to their team or from peer to peer, we celebrate contributions and impact through formal channels like our internal recognition portal, monetary spot bonuses and work anniversary moments. We also encourage informal, organic recognition every day through verbal thanks, Slack shoutouts and more. Recently we updated our manager toolkit with a menu of options to show gratitude, including customizable graphics that can be posted on LinkedIn. This blend of recognition approaches ensures that gratitude remains integral to our culture and the employee experience at Zscaler.
Zscaler’s Core Values
- Ownership and Collaboration: Ownership blends strategy and action, while collaboration emphasizes adaptable support, enabling meaningful contributions to team success.
- Trust Through Outcomes and Impact: Trust is built through delivering results, maintaining integrity and prioritizing the team, rather than relying on rank or tenure. It grows from impact and outcomes, fueling effective execution and collective progress.
- Challenge Culture with Ongoing Feedback: Effective execution thrives on honest, constructive conversations that challenge ideas and align the team to shared goals.
