Staff Software Engineer

Zania; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation & equity

Relocation and immigration support

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

Flexible PTO policy

Meals and snacks in the office

Job summary

Zania is seeking a Founding Software Engineer (Mid–Senior) to join a fast-growing team building backend systems powering its agentic AI platform. You will own core services, design scalable architectures, and help scale risk and compliance workflows for enterprise clients.

Ideal candidates bring 5–12 years of backend experience, deep Python expertise, and a track record of delivering robust systems in high-growth environments. Hybrid role with strong engineering collaboration and security focus.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS, eng or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of professional backend engineering with production impact.
• Hands-on Python and distributed systems experience.
• Strong communication of complex technical decisions to diverse stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Engineer core product features with scalable, secure backend services.
• Build petabyte-scale AI pipelines for large-scale data retrieval.
• Develop backend for 1000-step planning agents and human‑AI interfaces.
• Contribute to cloud infrastructure architecture for high availability.
• Ensure security and reliability for handling sensitive data.

Skills

Python

Distributed systems

Large-scale data processing

Cloud platforms

Ownership & drive

Pragmatic problem-solving

Clear communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Spark

TypeScript

React

Job description

Founding Software Engineer (Mid–Senior Level)

Why Zania

Every enterprise spends millions of dollars on Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC). It's one of the most critical, yet universally painful, parts of running a business. For decades, this industry has been dominated by legacy systems with notoriously low NPS scores, making it totally ripe for disruption.

Zania is building agentic AI for Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) to solve this massive problem. We are on a rocketship trajectory, creating intelligent agents that automate and augment the most complex risk and compliance workflows. We have found exceptional product-market fit and are scaling our team very quickly. Some reasons to join Zania are:

• Dream Customers: Our customers are the most notable enterprises in the world, including FAANG, Big 4 firms and a portfolio of top customers.

• Tier 1 Backing: Funded by a leading Tier 1 venture capital fund, giving us the resources to build a generational company.

• World-Class Team: Zania is hiring the best. Our team includes AI and Security leaders from Airbnb, Microsoft, Bain & Company, Deloitte, PwC, Brex, and Instacart.

• Pioneering Technology: Our engineers and GRC experts work at the absolute forefront of applied AI, building the next generation of agentic systems that will define the future of compliance.

• Hyper-Growth: We have seen 10x ARR growth in the last year and are rapidly expanding.

• Competitive Compensation & Equity.

The Role:

As a Software Engineer, you will be a core member of our engineering team, building the backend systems that power both our core product and our agentic AI platform. This is a backend-focused role for engineers who thrive on solving challenges at a massive scale; full-stack experience is a strong plus. You will design, build, and deploy the critical infrastructure and services that handle everything from petabyte-scale data retrieval to running thousand-step AI agents. This is a unique opportunity to tackle some of the most demanding problems in computing today and build systems with government-level security and reliability.

What You'll Do:

• Engineer Core Product Features: Take ownership of building and delivering scalable, secure backend services that directly power our user-facing product.

• Build Petabyte-Scale AI Pipelines: Design and implement robust systems for retrieval over petabyte-scale document troves and engineer pipelines for large-scale data collection.

• Develop Advanced Agentic Systems: Build the backend infrastructure for complex, 1000-step planning agents that help companies with critical processes, and create organizational‑level interfaces for human‑AI collaboration.

• Contribute to the architecture and management of our cloud infrastructure, ensuring high availability and performance.

• Engineer systems with the highest standards of security and reliability to protect the world's most sensitive data.

What We’re Looking For:

• Experience: 5-12 years of professional software engineering experience (not intended for recent graduates).

• Proven Technical Impact: A demonstrated track record of delivering complex, high-quality backend systems.

• Product Building Experience: You have a history of building and launching robust products or platforms, ideally in a hyper‑growth or 0-to-1 startup environment.

• Deep Technical Expertise: You are a hands‑on, highly technical backend engineer with proficiency in:

• Python: For building robust backend services and AI pipelines.

• Large-Scale Systems: Experience with distributed systems, large-scale data processing (e.g., Spark), and cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP).

• TypeScript and React: Experience is a plus for contributing across the stack but is not required.

• Ownership and Drive: You take full ownership of your projects, demonstrating a strong bias for action and the ability to manage complex priorities in a fast‑paced environment.

• Pragmatic Problem‑Solving: You are a proactive and resourceful problem‑solver who is comfortable with ambiguity and sees immense challenges as opportunities for growth.

• Clear Communication: You can articulate complex technical ideas clearly and persuasively to stakeholders across the organization.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience with demonstrated impact on production backend systems

• Hands‑on proficiency in Python and experience with distributed systems, large-scale data processing, or cloud infrastructure

• Strong written and verbal communication skills — you will work closely with cross‑functional teams and must clearly convey complex technical decisions to engineering peers and non‑technical stakeholders

Compensation and benefits

• Flexible PTO policy.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance

• Meals and snacks in the office

• Relocation and immigration support

Zania is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition, or any other basis protected by law.