Principal Applied Scientist, Agentic AI (Multimodal)

Zillow; United States; On-site; Full time

Job description

About the team

The Agentic AI team at Zillow is at the forefront of transforming the real estate industry by helping millions of people use AI technologies to find their next home. We aim to redefine the home shopping and transaction experience by providing an always‑on, multimodal assistant that integrates deep user and home insights, along with sophisticated reasoning. By embedding domain knowledge and specialized expertise in these assistants, we empower home buyers and real estate professionals to gain efficiency while maintaining Zillow's competitive edge. This lean, customer‑focused team comprises of scientists and engineers working together to deliver delightful customer experiences. We strongly believe in accountability, collaboration, and transparency.

About the role

Zillow is seeking a Principal Applied Scientist on the Agentic AI team to research and develop advanced, multimodal foundational technologies (CV, NLP, 3D) for next‑generation understanding of homes, both indoors and outdoors. They will be hands‑on in prototyping ideas, evaluating, and deploying models to Zillow's highly scalable infrastructure platforms.

• Design, prototype, and develop multi‑agent image‑forward, voice‑assisted experiences.
• Serve as the focal point for science projects, science roadmap development, driving alignment on timelines, and prioritization.
• Represent the team at conferences, publish in top‑tier journals, like CVPR, NeurIPS, ICCV, ACL, and SIGGRAPH, and champion internal best practices.
• Distill complex research findings and system designs into actionable insights for diverse audiences, including executives.
• Build innovative solutions that personalize using user behavior, context signals, and real‑time environmental data.

This role has been categorized as a Remote position. “Remote” employees do not have a permanent corporate office workplace and, instead, work from a physical location of their choice, which must be identified to the Company. U.S. employees may live in any of the 50 United States, with limited exceptions. In California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Washington state, and Washington DC the standard base pay range for this role is $186,700.00 – $298,300.00 annually. This base pay range is specific to these states and may not be applicable to other locations. In addition to a competitive base salary this position is also eligible for equity awards based on factors such as experience, performance and location. Actual amounts will vary depending on experience, performance and location.

Who you are

As a Principal Applied Scientist, you are a roll‑up‑the‑sleeves and get‑it‑done researcher who can marry scientific rigor with large‑scale engineering. We are looking for someone who has:

• A Ph.D. or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field with emphasis on computer vision, natural language processing.
• Solid background in Multi-task, Multimodal (Vision + Language) research, building models & algorithms.
• Proven science leadership in defining a science roadmap for a team and mentoring other scientists.
• Track record of publishing high‑impact research in top venues like CVPR, NeurIPS, ICCV, ACL, and SIGGRAPH.
• Experience developing dialogue systems capable of long conversations, multi‑step reasoning, and context‑rich decision‑making.
• Hands‑on experience fine‑tuning voice‑AI models for automatic speech recognition, turn detection, and speech generation is a bonus.
• Experience with geospatial datasets and 3-D vision techniques is a bonus.
• Track record of shipping large‑scale, high‑impact consumer‑facing solutions to production and measuring business impact.

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.

Applicants who receive job offers from Zillow Group will be asked to sign a Proprietary Rights Agreement which includes confidentiality, intellectual property assignment, customer and employee non‑solicitation, and non‑competition provisions. If you are contacted for a role at Zillow Group and wish to review a copy of the Proprietary Rights Agreement prior to receiving an offer, you may request a copy from your Recruiter.