Senior Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure

Zoo; Los Angeles (CA); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Zoo, based in Los Angeles, is on the lookout for a Senior Software Engineer specializing in Cloud Infrastructure. In this role, you will take ownership of the reliability, automation, and evolution of core systems while working across the stack with a heavy emphasis on backend and infrastructure engineering.

We require candidates to hold a B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent experience, along with strong proficiency in Rust and hands-on experience with distributed systems. The position provides opportunities for innovation and autonomy within a rapidly evolving environment.

Qualifications

• Professional experience in systems, platform, or infrastructure engineering.
• Proficiency in Rust with a solid understanding of systems-level programming.
• Hands-on experience with distributed systems or service-oriented architectures.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and maintain core systems and services for reliability.
• Build automation and tooling to reduce operational overhead.
• Develop integrations between systems and external platforms.

Skills

Systems engineering

Backend engineering

Rust

Distributed systems

Automation

API design

Education

B.S. in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Databases

Infrastructure-as-code

Containerized deployments

Job description

About Us

We're on a mission to revolutionize the CAD industry by developing the world's most advanced hardware design infrastructure and tools. Mechanical CAD is in the dark ages, and hardware demands have outpaced today’s hardware design infrastructure. The industry is due for a refresh, and we're laying the foundation for a modern hardware design toolkit so that you can create new design tools never before possible.

We are headquartered in Los Angeles, CA with both a local and remote team. We were founded and incubated by Embedded Ventures in 2021.

About You

We’re looking for curious, innovative, and ambitious self-starters to join our lean and growing team to help us bring our mission to life. We think you’ll thrive on our team if you’re:

• Curious at your core, with an eagerness to learn and do things differently
• Customer-focused, always thinking about ways to improve the user experience
• Able to operate autonomously and work asynchronously, while also being an effective team player

About The Role

We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure who can take ownership of the reliability, automation, and evolution of our core systems. You’ll work across the stack, with an strong emphasis on backend, infrastructure, and system-level engineering, to strengthen the foundations that everything else runs on. This role is for someone who enjoys digging into complex systems, building the tooling and automation that keep them running smoothly, and stepping in anywhere (including the frontend) when something needs fixing.

What You’ll Do

• Design, implement, and maintain core systems and services that support our platform’s reliability, performance, and scalability.
• Build automation and tooling that reduce operational overhead, improve developer workflows, and enforce system-level consistency.
• Develop integrations between our systems and external platforms (e.g., billing, CRM, authentication, analytics).
• Improve observability, monitoring, and alerting across services to ensure strong operational visibility.
• Architect and maintain infrastructure components (e.g., distributed services, data pipelines, deployment automation).
• Contribute to security-focused systems work, such as permissions controls, access flows, and auditability.
• Troubleshoot issues across services and layers, backend, infrastructure, and occasionally frontend, taking full ownership from diagnosis to resolution.
• Jump into frontend code as needed to close the loop on system-level changes or fix issues that block broader system reliability.

What You’ll Need

• B.S. in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Strong professional experience in systems, platform, or infrastructure engineering.
• Proficiency in Rust with a solid understanding of systems-level programming.
• Solid experience with databases (transactional & analytical) including schema design, performance tuning, migrations, and operational reliability.
• Strong understanding of API design, data flows, and service integrations.
• Hands‑on experience with distributed systems or service‑oriented architectures.
• Comfort working with infrastructure‑as‑code and containerized deployments.
• Ability to work autonomously and make high‑leverage technical decisions in a fast‑moving environment.
• A bias toward automation and building tools that remove friction.

Nice to Have

• Experience with frontend development (JavaScript/React) for occasional UI‑level fixes.
• Background with billing systems (Stripe) or CRM platforms.
• Experience building internal tooling, permissions systems, or developer productivity infrastructure.
• Familiarity with CAD‑adjacent workflows or domain‑specific data pipelines.