Senior Staff Software Engineer, Internal Tools

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative; Redwood City (CA); Hybrid; USD 241,000 - 331,100; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) match

Paid time off to volunteer

Relocation support

Job summary

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is seeking a Senior Staff Software Engineer for Internal Tools in Redwood City. You’ll set technical direction for the platform, lead complex builds hands‑on, and act as the senior technical voice across Operations, Biohub, and Learning Commons.

The role emphasizes high autonomy, deep design discipline, and delivering scalable internal tools to accelerate back‑office work while maintaining security and governance.

Qualifications

• 12+ years building production software systems; senior IC tech‑lead experience.
• Strong full‑stack fundamentals; capable of shipping production apps and integration layers.
• Experience operating cloud infrastructure with IaC.
• Strong API integration experience at enterprise SaaS level.
• Fluency with MCP, LLM tool/function calling, agent frameworks, and retrieval/knowledge infra.
• Comfort with evolving requirements and ambiguity.
• Strong stakeholder fluency; discuss technical topics with senior partners.

Responsibilities

• Set architectural strategy and roadmap for applications, AI agents, workflows, and knowledge infrastructure.
• Architect and maintain scalable production applications with emphasis on automation and governance.
• Design and build AI layer; create custom agents and retrieval substrates.
• Tech‑lead a small team; set design/code review standards and mentor contractors.
• Collaborate with senior stakeholders across Biohub, Learning Commons, Investments and IT teams.

Skills

Senior IC leadership

Full‑stack engineering

Infrastructure as Code

API integration

LLM tool calling

Retrieval/knowledge infra

Stakeholder communication

Ambiguity tolerance

Job description

Senior Staff Software Engineer, Internal Tools

Redwood City, CA (Hybrid)

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was founded in 2015 by Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg to harness the power of technology to pursue some of society’s most ambitious goals — from curing or preventing all disease to transforming how students learn.

At CZI, you’ll join a deeply collaborative, mission-driven community where your work helps drive breakthroughs across our flagship nonprofit organizations, Biohub and Learning Commons. Whether enabling scientific breakthroughs via open science and AI-powered biology or strengthening the tools teachers and students rely on every day, your contributions help turn bold ideas into real-world impact.

Our teams operate at the intersection of innovation and scale, building the infrastructure, partnerships, and capabilities that allow scientists, educators, and innovators to tackle some of the most complex challenges of our time — and to do so with urgency, integrity, and optimism.

The Team

The Operations team is a key partner in enabling Biohub’s pioneering work to combine frontier AI with frontier biology to solve disease and Learning Commons’ mission to build AI infrastructure that aligns how students learn with the tools that shape their learning experiences.

Operations includes our Central Tech, Finance, Marketing & Communications, People, and Real Estate / Workplace / Events / Facilities / Security (REWFS) teams. Together, these teams create the systems, programs, and experiences that empower our partners and colleagues across Biohub and Learning Commons to drive impact.

This work requires strategic and operational rigor, creativity, and deep collaboration. Whether designing world-class employee experiences, safeguarding data and infrastructure, or shaping how we communicate our impact, Operations plays a critical role in helping deliver meaningful change at scale.

The Opportunity

Our Central Tech team provides technology and security support for CZI and our grantees. We believe that Engineering, IT and Security are most effective when in sync and learning from each other on a daily basis. Across our three pillars of Infrastructure, Security, and Grantee & Partner Support, we enable our teams to achieve their goals faster and more securely. We leverage technology to automate manual processes, constantly innovate to optimize operations, provide first-class support, and build solutions to enable the scale and execution of our business partners' strategies and initiatives.

This role is about building the internal tools and AI-powered workflows that make CZI's employees more effective at the work they do. As the Senior Staff Software Engineer for Internal Tools, you'll set technical direction for the platform — the applications, agents, integrations, and knowledge infrastructure that turn back-office work into something teams can do faster, better, and with more leverage. You'll lead the hardest builds hands‑on and be the senior technical voice for this work across the function.

This is a high-autonomy, high-impact tech lead IC role. The team is intentionally small — the leverage comes from depth and design discipline, not headcount. Over time, you may take on management of contingent engineering support and a small number of engineers as the team’s scope develops. Success looks like applications business teams actually adopt, technical patterns that get reused instead of rebuilt every quarter, and an engineering bar that holds without needing to be enforced.

What You’ll Do

• Set technical strategy by defining the architecture and technical roadmap across the stack — applications, AI agents and workflows, integrations, and knowledge infrastructure
• Architect and maintain reliable, scalable production applications with a focus on infrastructure automation and governance
• Design and build the AI layer — custom agents, workflows, and the knowledge and retrieval substrate that lets them reason over connected enterprise data
• Tech‑lead a small team: set the design and code review bar, partner with engineers on what good looks like, mentor contingent engineering support
• Partner with senior business stakeholders across the org and with embedded engineers in Investments, Biohub, and Learning Commons

What You’ll Bring

• 12+ years building production software systems, with meaningful time as a Senior Staff or Principal IC tech‑leading small teams
• Strong full‑stack engineering fundamentals — comfortable shipping production applications, backend services, and the integration layer between them
• Experience operating cloud infrastructure for production systems using industry‑standard best practices like Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
• Strong API integration experience at the enterprise SaaS layer — auth, rate limits, schema drift, failure modes
• Working fluency with MCP, LLM tool/function calling, current agent frameworks, and retrieval/knowledge infrastructure (knowledge graphs, vector stores, RAG)
• Comfort with ambiguity; ability to make progress when requirements are evolving
• Strong stakeholder fluency; you can hold technical conversations with senior business partners without a translator
• Nice to have:
  • Background in enterprise IT, business systems, or platform engineering;
  • Experience operating in hub-and-spoke models with embedded engineering teams;
  • Direct production experience building LLM-based applications, custom agents, or agentic workflows

Compensation

The Redwood City, CA base pay range for a new hire in this role is $241,000 – $331,100. New hires are typically hired into the lower portion of the range, enabling employee growth in the range over time. Actual placement in range is based on job-related skills and experience, as evaluated throughout the interview process.

This position may be eligible to participate in our discretionary annual performance bonus program. Bonus eligibility and targets are determined in accordance with our total rewards philosophy and may vary by role.

Better Together

As we grow, we’re excited to strengthen in-person connections and cultivate a collaborative, team-oriented environment. This role is a hybrid position requiring you to be onsite for at least 60% of the working month, approximately 3 days a week, with specific in-office days determined by the team’s manager. The exact schedule will be at the hiring manager’s discretion and communicated during the interview process.

Benefits for the Whole You

• Provides a generous employer match on employee 401(k) contributions to support planning for the future.
• Paid time off to volunteer at an organization of your choice.
• Relocation support for employees who need assistance moving.

Equal Employment Opportunity

As set forth in the organization’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Voluntary Self Identification

For reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in the organization’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran’s discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

Reasonable Accommodation Notice

The organization provides (and state and federal law requires) reasonable accommodations to be provided to qualified applicants with disabilities. Your recruiter will work with you during the interview process should you require any such accommodations. Examples of reasonable accommodation include making a change to the application process or work procedures, providing documents in an alternate format, using a sign language interpreter, or using specialized equipment.

Background Check Notice

As part of our hiring process, all offers of employment are contingent upon the successful completion of a background check. By submitting your application, you acknowledge that you will be required to undergo a background check prior to employment.

Artificial Intelligence Usage Notice

We use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications and analyzing resumes. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you have questions about this once your are in our hiring process, please contact your Recruiter.