Staff Engineer, Applied AI

AI at ZapierAt Zapier, we build and use automation every day to make work more efficient, creative, and human. So if you’re using AI tools while applying here - that’s great! We just ask that you use them responsibly and transparently.Check out our guidance on How to Collaborate with AI During Zapier’s Hiring Process, including how to use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or others during our hiring process - and when not to.About ZapierWe're humans who simply think computers should do more work.At Zapier, we’re building a platform to help millions of businesses scale with automation and AI. Our mission is simple: make automation work for everyone. As a member of the team, you’ll collaborate with intelligent, curious people, build and apply cutting-edge tools, and leverage the flexibility of remote work. Your work will directly fuel our customers’ success, and as they grow, so will you.Our Commitment to ApplicantsCulture and Values at ZapierZapier Guide to Remote WorkZapier Code of ConductDiversity and Inclusivity at ZapierStaff Applied AI Engineer, AI CapabilitiesAbout The RoleZapier is hiring a Staff Applied AI Engineer for our AI Capabilities team, the group responsible for building the shared AI execution platform that powers every AI product at Zapier, including Agents, Chatbots, AI by Zapier, and future orchestration experiences.This is one of the most foundational engineering roles at Zapier today.AI Capabilities is unifying the runtimes, tooling, data models, and orchestration layers behind our AI products into a single, reliable, high-quality platform with great ergonomics. We’re building what Zapier’s AI foundation should have been from day one—and we’re delivering it in a way that accelerates all other AI teams.As the Staff Applied AI Engineer on this team, you’ll bring deep technical expertise in LLMs, orchestration, evaluation, runtime systems, and platform engineering. You’ll help shape our unified architecture, guide tough tradeoffs, elevate our engineering standards, and ensure the platform is scalable, safe, cost-efficient, and easy to build on.If you want to work on hard AI platform problems that directly impact user-facing products—and you’re energized by building the foundation that other AI-focused teams and millions of users will rely on—you’ll thrive here.Why this is different (and exciting)This is a rare opportunity to help build the AI platform behind one of the world’s largest automation ecosystems. The AI Capabilities team empowers every runtime AI product at Zapier; Agents, Chatbots, AI by Zapier, and the orchestration surfaces yet to come.You’ll work on challenges that matter: making AI reliable, fast, safe, cost-efficient, and easy to build on. Your work will enable product teams to ship smarter features faster, and you’ll see your impact reflected directly in the experiences our customers use to run their businesses.If you’re excited about high-leverage engineering work that blends platform design, system architecture, and applied AI, this role gives you a front-row seat to shape how intelligent automation gets built at scale.About YouProven engineering impact: You’ve driven outcomes in complex, cloud-based systems used by real customers. Bonus: you’ve helped win or expand enterprise deals—leading POCs, navigating security/compliance reviews, or shaping product requirements to land enterprise adoption. Many strong candidates for our Staff roles have 10+ years’ experience. We hire for impact and capability, not years.LLM expertise: You have at least 2 years or equivalent depth of hands-on work with large language models in production, including user-facing products leveraging agent architectures. You are familiar with transformer networks, attention mechanisms, and their role in generating responses, function calls, and other complex tasks.Evaluation & retrieval systems: You have direct experience deploying evaluation frameworks for LLMs (performance, reliability, bias) and building Retrieva ... (truncated, view full listing at source)