Senior Software Engineer, Applied AI Services

About the team

About the role

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer Applied AI Services to build and scale endtoend intelligent systems that power personalized experiences and HDPaligned capabilities.

This is a handson IC role where youll spend most of your time writing code and driving technical design for impactful production systems. You will operate at the intersection of:

• Scalable backend services (APIs events data stores cloud infrastructure) and

• Applied AI/ML systems (offline data ingestion feature and signal pipelines LLM/MLpowered capabilities evaluation frameworks and AIdriven workflows).

You will help turn user intent into intelligence safely bring new AI capabilities from 01 and scale them across Zillows shopper journey surfaces.

You Will Get To

• Lead endtoend delivery of features from early prototypes to productionhardened systems.

• Work deeply with AI/ML workflows while applying solid engineering and reliability practices.

• Design build and maintain data pipelines (e.g. Spark Databricks Python Kafka or equivalents) that turn raw events and signals into durable features and model inputs.

• Develop and integrate ML/LLM capabilities (e.g. embeddings similarity search ranking clustering text generation) into backend flows and expose them via stable wellversioned services and APIs for product teams to consume.

• Design and iterate on prompts configurations and AI workflows using notebooks and offline experimentation and build automated evaluation systems (e.g. LLMasjudge regression suites sampling pipelines) with clear quality metrics for accuracy safety latency and cost.

• Translate prototypes into reliable observable production systems with solid tests deployment pipelines and oncall readiness; own their operational health through runbooks incident reviews and continuous improvements while optimizing for performance reliability and cost.

• Collaborate closely with AI/ML and Agentic AI teams to bring 01 AI capabilities to customers and evolve them to 1N partner with SJS and HDP engineers on clean interfaces between offline pipelines model outputs and online APIs/events and contribute reusable libraries templates and examples that help other engineers ship AIpowered features faster.

In addition to a competitive base salary and benefits this position is also eligible for equity awards based on factors such as experience performance and location.

Who you are

• You are strongly proficient in at least one backend programming language such as Python Java Kotlin or similar and have delivered scalable services or APIs to production in a cloud environment (e.g. AWS GCP) including thoughtful data modeling and performance tuning.

• You have handson experience with data processing or distributed systems (e.g. Spark Databricks Kafka or similar data pipelines) and are comfortable designing and consuming APIs (REST or GraphQL).

• Youve worked with ML or LLMbased systems and shipped at least one feature or capability to production in partnership with an AI/ML team or selfbuilt.

• Youre familiar with embeddings ranking clustering recommendations or other ML applications that support personalization and search/browse experiences.

• You have experience with prompt engineering and LLMbased product development including safety/guardrail considerations and offline/online evaluation frameworks for AIpowered features.

• You are comfortable in modern infrastructure environments (e.g. Kubernetesbased deployments eventdriven architectures and observability stacks) and can translate prototypes into robust observable welltested production systems.

• You have a track record of owning projects endtoend from requirements and design through implementation rollout operations and crossfunctional collaboration with product design and data science partners.

• Here at Zillow we value the experience and perspective of candidates with nontraditional backgrounds. We encourage you to apply if you have transferable skills or related experiences.

Get to know us

At Zillow were reimagining how people movethrough the real estate market and through their careers. As the most-visited real estate platform in the U.S. we help customers navigate buying selling financing and renting with greater ease and confidence. Whether youre working in tech sales operations or design youll be part of a company thats reshaping an industry and helping more people make home a reality.

Zillow is honored to be recognized among the best workplaces in the country. Zillow was named one of FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2025 and included on the PEOPLE Companies That Care 2025 list reflecting our commitment to creating an innovative inclusive and engaging culture where employees are empowered to grow.

No matter where you sit in the organization your work will help drive innovation support our customers and move the industryand your careerforward together.

Zillow Group is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive innovative environment with the best employees. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race color ancestry religion sex national origin sexual orientation age citizenship marital status disability gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation please contact your recruiter directly.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable state and local law.

Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees supervisors and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees supervisors and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal state and local laws and Company policies. Criminal history may have a direct adverse and negative relationship with some of the material job duties of this position. These include the duties and responsibilities listed above as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies exercise sound judgment effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism and safeguard business operations and the Companys reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.