Staff AI Engineer

Zoom; Seattle (WA); Hybrid; USD 207,000 - 452,000; Full time

Job summary

Zoom is seeking an experienced software engineer to design and own inference systems powering its AI models at production scale, across real-time communication, vision, and language workloads. You will optimize kernel-level performance, work on inference frameworks, and shape delivery pipelines with research and platform teams.

You will collaborate with research to translate model changes into efficient implementations, profile CUDA kernels, and ensure latency SLOs and cost goals are met.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
• 5+ years of software engineering experience, with focus on inference systems or ML infra.
• Hands-on experience with at least one major inference framework.

Responsibilities

• Design and build high-performance inference serving systems for large-scale transformer and multimodal models (100B+ and MoE).
• Implement and tune inference optimisations: speculative decoding, continuous batching, KV cache management, prefill/decode disaggregation, and quantisation (INT4/INT8/FP8).
• Contribute to and customise inference frameworks (vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, SGLang, or equivalent) for production needs.
• Write and profile CUDA kernels and custom ops where framework-level optimisation is insufficient.
• Own end-to-end deployment: packaging, serving API design, latency SLO monitoring, and incident response.
• Partner with research to translate model changes into inference-efficient implementations.
• Drive technical design and set the bar for inference engineering practices.

Skills

5+ years software engineering

inference systems

CUDA kernel development

Python and C++

production ML inference

speculative decoding

continuous batching

KV cache design

quantisation pipelines

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/EE

Tools

vLLM

TensorRT-LLM

SGLang

ONNX Runtime

Job description

What You Can Expect

You’ll design, implement, and own the inference systems that serve Zoom's AI models at production scale -- across real-time communication, vision, and language workloads. You’ll be hands‑on with kernel‑level optimisation, inference framework internals, and production serving infrastructure, working closely with research and platform teams to push the boundary on latency, throughput, and cost.

About The Team

You will join a dynamic AI Infrastructure team focused on enabling high-performance AI across Zoom's products and services. The team builds the core systems that support model training, deployment, and inference at scale, driving innovation in areas such as real-time communication, computer vision, and natural language understanding.

Responsibilities

• Design and build high-performance inference serving systems for large-scale transformer and multimodal models (including 100B+ and MoE architectures)
• Implement and tune inference optimisations: speculative decoding, continuous batching, KV cache management, prefill/decode disaggregation, and quantisation (INT4/INT8/FP8)
• Contribute to and customise inference frameworks (vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, SGLang, or equivalent) for Zoom's production requirements
• Write and profile CUDA kernels and custom ops where framework-level optimisation is insufficient
• Own end‑to‑end deployment: from model packaging and serving API design to latency SLO monitoring and incident response
• Partner with research to translate model architecture changes into inference‑efficient implementations
• Drive technical design and set the bar for inference engineering practices across the team

What We're Looking For

• A Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• 5+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time spent on inference systems or ML infrastructure at production depth
• Hands‑on experience with at least one major inference framework: vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, SGLang, or ONNX Runtime (serving, not just export)
• GPU programming experience: CUDA kernel development, memory optimisation, and profiling with Nsight or equivalent tools
• Production experience serving LLMs or large vision models -- you've owned latency SLOs, debugged throughput regressions, and shipped optimisations that moved the needle
• Depth in at least two of: speculative decoding, continuous batching, KV cache design, quantisation pipelines, prefill/decode disaggregation
• Strong systems instincts in Python and C++; ability to read and modify framework internals

Preferred

• Advanced degree (Master's or PhD) in a relevant technical field
• Experience with MoE models or 100B+ parameter deployments
• Familiarity with disaggregated serving architectures or multi‑node inference
• Background in compiler‑level optimisation (XLA, Triton, or similar)

Minimum

Salary Range or On Target Earnings:

$206,600.00

Maximum

$451,800.00

In addition to the base salary and/or OTE listed Zoom has a Total Direct Compensation philosophy that takes into consideration; base salary, bonus and equity value.

Note: Starting pay will be based on a number of factors and commensurate with qualifications & experience.

We also have a location based compensation structure; there may be a different range for candidates in this and other locations

Anticipated Position Close Date: 10/16/26

Ways of Working

Our structured hybrid approach is centered around our offices and remote work environments. The work style of each role, Hybrid, Remote, or In‑Person is indicated in the job description/posting.

Benefits

As part of our award‑winning workplace culture and commitment to delivering happiness, our benefits program offers a variety of perks, benefits, and options to help employees maintain their physical, mental, emotional, and financial health; support work‑life balance; and contribute to their community in meaningful ways.

About Us

Zoomies help people stay connected so they can get more done together. We set out to build the best collaboration platform for the enterprise, and today help people communicate better with products like Zoom Contact Center, Zoom Phone, Zoom Events, Zoom Apps, Zoom Rooms, and Zoom Webinars.

We’re problem‑solvers, working at a fast pace to design solutions with our customers and users in mind. Find room to grow with opportunities to stretch your skills and advance your career in a collaborative, growth‑focused environment.

Our Commitment

At Zoom, we believe great work happens when people feel supported and empowered. We’re committed to fair hiring practices that ensure every candidate is evaluated based on skills, experience, and potential.

After you apply, our interviews are supported by BrightHire, a tool that helps us create a consistent and thoughtful interview experience and may include recordings. Please refer to our candidate privacy statement for more information of how we use your data.