Senior Manager, Incident Management

Zillow; United States; On-site; USD 125,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Zillow is seeking a Senior Manager of Incident Management (M4) to lead incident and problem management, driving reliability and operational excellence across production systems. The role focuses on program leadership, structured RCA, and AI-powered workflows to improve MTTR/MTTD and prevent recurrence.

The candidate will manage a team of incident managers, collaborate with Engineering and Product leadership, and establish standards for escalation, communication, and governance while shaping how

Qualifications

• 8+ years in incident management or SRE.
• 2+ years of people management.
• Experience with AI-driven operations tooling.
• Strong communication and leadership skills.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end incident management program across the organization.
• Serve as executive escalation point for critical incidents.
• Drive RCA and blameless post-incident reviews.
• Lead problem management to reduce recurrence and risks.
• Champion AI-enabled workflows to speed detection and resolution.
• Build and coach a high-performing incident management team.
• Define and track metrics like MTTR/MTTD and closure rates.

Skills

Incident management

SRE

People management

AI tooling

Tools

Rootly

JIRA

ServiceNow

AI tooling

Job description

About the team

Zillow Group is seeking a Senior Manager, Incident Management (M4) to lead our incident and problem management function and elevate how we drive operational excellence across production systems. This role owns the strategy, process, and people behind incident response and problem management, ensuring we not only resolve incidents quickly but prevent recurrence and continuously raise the bar on reliability.

At the M4 level, success is anchored in four core areas: Program Leadership: building and scaling the incident and problem management practice across the organization; Problem Management: driving structured root cause analysis and systemic fixes that reduce repeat incidents; AI-Enabled Operations: leveraging AI workflows and tooling to increase the speed, quality, and actionability of incident and problem outputs for internal partners; and People Leadership: developing a high-performing team of incident managers and setting the standard for operational rigor.

About the role

Responsibilities

Incident Management Leadership

• Own the end-to-end incident management program, including process design, tooling, and governance across the organization
• Serve as executive escalation point and senior decision-maker for critical, high-severity, or cross-functional incidents
• Set and enforce standards for incident severity classification, escalation paths, and communication protocols
• Partner with Engineering, Product, and business leadership to align incident response with business priorities and risk tolerance
• Drive executive-level incident communications, ensuring leadership has clear, timely, and accurate visibility into impact and status

Problem Management

• Build and own a formal problem management practice that connects incident trends to systemic root causes
• Ensure every significant incident produces a rigorous, blameless root cause analysis (RCA) with clearly owned, tracked corrective actions
• Establish mechanisms to identify recurring issues, chronic risks, and process gaps across incident history
• Hold cross-functional partners accountable for closing problem records and remediation items on committed timelines
• Report on problem management outcomes and reliability trends to leadership, tying them to measurable risk reduction

Leveraging AI Workflows for Speed & Quality

• Champion the adoption of AI-powered tooling and workflows across incident detection, triage, summarization, and RCA drafting
• Design and continuously improve AI-assisted workflows that turn raw incident and problem data into clear, actionable insights for internal partners
• Ensure AI-generated call-outs, summaries, and reports meet a high bar for accuracy, relevance, and actionability before reaching stakeholders
• Identify opportunities to automate repetitive operational tasks (documentation, status updates, trend analysis) to free the team to focus on higher-value judgment work
• Partner with Engineering and Data teams to pilot, evaluate, and scale new AI capabilities that improve mean-time-to-resolution and mean-time-to-detection

People & Team Leadership

• Hire, coach, and develop a team of incident managers, building depth and bench strength across severity levels
• Set clear performance expectations and career growth paths for the team
• Establish on-call structures, workload balance, and rotations that sustain team health and reliability coverage
• Foster a culture of ownership, continuous improvement, and blameless learning within the team

Operational Excellence & Continuous Improvement

• Define and track key metrics (MTTR, MTTD, recurrence rate, action-item closure rate) to measure program health and impact
• Continuously refine runbooks, tooling, and workflows based on retrospectives and data trends
• Facilitate post-incident reviews for major incidents, ensuring lessons learned translate into concrete process or system changes
• Benchmark practices against industry standards and bring in outside best practices where relevant

Scope & Impact

• Owns the incident and problem management strategy and roadmap for the organization
• Accountable for outcomes across the full incident lifecycle, from detection through remediation and prevention
• Directly manages a team of incident managers and indirectly influences engineering and support teams during incident response
• Shapes how AI and automation are applied across operational workflows, with measurable impact on speed and quality of output
• Decisions and process changes influence reliability posture and stakeholder trust across the broader organization

This role has been categorized as an Office position. “Office” employees regularly work at an existing ZG corporate office for approximately 80 to 100 percent of their time each month. Employees must live within reasonable commuting distance of their designated ZG office. ZG has not defined a reasonable distance, and expects employees will use judgment in determining this for themselves and understand the implications re: time commitment and cost of daily commute. In California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Washington state, and Washington DC the standard base pay range for this role is $132,400.00 - $211,600.00 annually. This base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations. In Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia the standard base pay range for this role is $125,800.00 - $201,000.00 annually. The base pay range is specific to these locations 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. Employees in this role will not be paid below the salary threshold for exempt employees in the state where they reside.

Who you are

• 8+ years of experience in incident management, SRE, technical operations, or a related field, including 2+ years of people management experience (or equivalent combination of education and experience)
• Proven track record building or scaling an incident management and/or problem management program
• Strong understanding of structured incident management practices (triage, escalation, post-incident review) and formal problem management methodologies
• Experience leveraging AI tools or workflows (e.g., LLM-based summarization, automation, analytics) to improve operational speed and output quality
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to distill complex technical situations into clear, actionable updates for executives and internal partners
• Demonstrated sound judgment, composure, and decision-making under pressure during high-severity or ambiguous situations
• Experience coaching and developing incident managers or similar operational talent
• Comfortable partnering across Engineering, Product, Support, and business leadership to drive alignment and accountability
• Plus: Experience with incident management/on-call tooling (e.g., Rootly, JIRA, ServiceNow) and AI-driven operations tooling
• Plus: Exposure to distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, or large-scale consumer applications

Get to know us

At Zillow, we’re reimagining how people move—through 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 you're working in tech, sales, operations, or design, you’ll be part of a company that's 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 industry—and your career—forward, 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 Company’s reputation. Pursuant to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.