Staff Software Engineer - AI Copilot (Backend)

Zendesk, Inc.; United States; Hybrid; USD 210,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work model

Job summary

Zendesk, Inc. is seeking a staff backend engineer to lead the architecture and delivery of a conversational AI copilot for customer service admins. You will guide the path from design to production, balancing hands-on engineering with technical direction across teams.

Required eight+ years in backend systems, strong distributed design, and experience with AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD. Hybrid work setup offers collaboration both in-office and remote flexibility.

Qualifications

• Eight+ years in software engineering with backend leadership.
• Experience designing distributed systems at scale.
• Production work with large language models and orchestration.
• Fluent in Ruby, Python, or Go; able to work with additional languages.
• Strong AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD knowledge.
• Clear communication and ability to align multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for conversational backend capabilities.
• Own complex features from design to production support.
• Establish engineering standards and scalable architectures.
• Collaborate with ML, product, design, and engineering partners.
• Develop evaluation, safeguards, and safety mechanisms for models.
• Mentor engineers and address systemic risks and reliability gaps.

Skills

Backend languages: Ruby, Python, Go

Distributed systems design

API design & data pipelines

LLM integration & orchestration

AWS cloud & CI/CD pipelines

Docker & Kubernetes

Software leadership & mentoring

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Role overview

Lead the backend architecture and delivery for a conversational AI copilot that helps customer service administrators configure and improve their systems through natural language. This staff‑level role combines hands‑on engineering with technical direction across a team and adjacent groups, covering the path from design through production operation.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction for conversational backend capabilities, including language-model orchestration, intent detection, context retrieval, and tool execution.
• Own complex features through design, implementation, release, and ongoing production support.
• Establish engineering standards and make architecture decisions that support reliable, scalable services.
• Work with machine learning scientists, product, design, and engineering partners to shape the technical roadmap.
• Develop evaluation approaches, safeguards, and safety mechanisms for language-model features in production.
• Mentor engineers and address systemic risks, performance constraints, and reliability gaps.

Requirements

• At least eight years of software engineering experience, including technical leadership in backend systems.
• Strong experience designing distributed systems at scale, including APIs, services, and data pipelines.
• Production experience integrating large language models, such as orchestration, prompt design, evaluation, safeguards, or multiple model providers.
• Fluency in a backend language such as Ruby, Python, or Go, with working ability in additional languages.
• Deep understanding of AWS, containerized deployments with Docker and Kubernetes, and CI/CD.
• Experience setting technical direction and aligning teams, plus clear communication and sound judgment in ambiguous situations.

Nice to have

• Background in conversational AI, model serving, inference pipelines, or model evaluation.
• Familiarity with event-driven systems, SQL, data platforms, or experimentation tools such as Metaflow and MLflow.
• Experience technically leading or mentoring a group of three or more engineers.

Benefits and work setup

• Hybrid work, with in‑person collaboration at an office for part of the week and remote flexibility for the remainder.