Staff Software Engineer, Job Seeker Apps

ZipRecruiter; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 195,000 - 255,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive pay

Benefits package

Flexible PTO

401(k) match

Job summary

ZipRecruiter in Chicago, IL is seeking a highly autonomous Staff/Senior Software Engineer for the Job Seeker Apps team. You’ll drive end-to-end development across data, backend, and frontend, collaborating with product and science teams to shape user-facing features and AI-driven workflows.

This role emphasizes technical leadership, mentorship, and cross-functional partnership with product and decision science.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software development experience.
• Strong CS fundamentals: OOP, data structures, algorithms.
• Track record building user-facing products with measurable impact.
• Experience partnering with Product Managers to translate problems into engineering solutions.
• Curiosity about the product and its problems.

Responsibilities

• End-to-End Systems Engineering across data, backend, and frontend spaces.
• Cross-functional product strategy with PM and Decision Science.
• Technical leadership and mentoring of engineers and managers.
• Design and implement data-driven measures of feature success.
• Architect AI integration and safe, scalable agentic workflows.

Skills

ReactJS

TypeScript

AI/ML basics

Data Lake

Education

BS/MS/PhD in Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, related field

Job description

Staff Software Engineer, Job Seeker Apps

Chicago, IL

We offer a hybrid work environment. Most US-based positions can also be performed remotely (any exceptions will be noted in the Minimum Qualifications below.)

Our Mission:

To actively connect people to their next great opportunity.

Who We Are:

ZipRecruiter is a leading online employment marketplace. Powered by AI-driven smart matching technology, the company actively connects millions of all-sized businesses and job seekers through innovative mobile, web, and email services, as well as through partnerships with the best job boards on the web. ZipRecruiter has the #1 rated job search app on iOS & Android.

About the Team:

The Job Seeker Apps team builds the primary interfaces and proactive communication systems that guide millions of users through their job search journey. Our team focuses on transforming the job search experience from passive searching to proactive opportunity. Here’s how we do that:

• Supporting Job Seekers Everywhere: We build interfaces and platforms to reach job seekers wherever they are. Our team owns ZipRecruiter’s mobile apps and ZipRecruiter’s interfaces to third party AI and agentic systems. We are responsible for growing these channels so job seekers can continue their job search wherever works for them.
• Proactive Messaging and Communication: We build the critical systems for composing and sending the right information (emails, push notifications) to job seekers at the optimal time. Our goal is to transform ZipRecruiter into a personal recruiter, optimizing content, volume, and scheduling to ensure job seekers find satisfying opportunities while meeting employer hiring needs.
• Capturing Job Seeker Wants and Offers:We help job seekers succeed in our marketplace by helping them express what they want out of their next opportunity, and what they offer to their potential employer, through experiences like the profile page and apply flow.
• Guiding the Logged-In Experience: We own the tools and systems that guide a user's job search, including the logged-in homepage. We deliver personalized content, new job recommendations based on user history, and proactive guidance on the current state of their search to help them secure their next great role.

About the Job:

We are seeking a highly autonomous and versatile Staff/Senior Software Engineer to join our Job Seeker Apps team. In this role, you’ll support engineering leadership, driving systems thinking and end-to-end development. You’ll work closely with the teams behind job seeker profiles and our AI agent experiences, building the core systems that carry a job seeker’s information and intent into our marketplace. This is a high-impact position where you will actively collaborate with Product and Decision Science teams to shape user-facing features and AI-driven workflows.

What You’ll Do:

• End-to-End Systems Engineering: Operate across multiple problem spaces—from data engineering to backend infrastructure and full-stack integration.
• Cross-Functional Product Strategy: Partner closely with Product Management and Decision Science to inject engineering perspectives early in the product development lifecycle.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Act as a technical anchor, up-leveling an engineering team, guiding ICs, and keeping Engineering Managers aligned on technical execution.
• Impact Measurement: Design and implement creative, data-driven methods to measure the real-world success of newly shipped user-facing features.
• AI Integration: Architect how ZipRecruiter is presented in AI assistants and agentic systems, with the measurement and guardrails to run those integrations safely at scale.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 8+ years of professional software development experience
• Strong computer science fundamentals, including object-oriented programming, data structures, and algorithms
• A track record of building user-facing products with measurable impact
• Experience working with Product Managers to turn user problems into engineering solutions
• Deep curiosity about the product you work on and the problems it solves

Bonus Points for Experience With Any Of:

• Client-side development using ReactJS, TypeScript, or other modern languages and frameworks
• A data lake stack: parquet on object storage, a data catalog such as AWS Glue, an open table format such as Apache Iceberg or Delta Lake, a data processing framework like Apache Spark or Flink
• BS/MS/PhD in Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, related technical field or equivalent practical experience

As part of our team you’ll enjoy:

• Competitive compensation
• Exceptional benefits package
• Flexible Vacation & Paid Time Off
• Employer-matched 401(k) plan

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $195,000 - $255,000. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location, and the range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location, role-related knowledge and skills, depth of experience, relevant education or training, and additional role-related considerations.

Depending on the position offered, equity, bonuses, commission, or other forms of compensation may also be provided as part of a total compensation package, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and other benefits.

ZipRecruiter is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or genetics.

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government 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 hiringprocess or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in aconfidential file.

As set forth in ZipRecruiter’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.As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measurethe effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categoriesis 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.