Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Zillow is seeking a highly experienced, product-minded Senior Machine Learning Engineer to anchor their Agentic Data Foundations team within the broader Agentic Data Platform organization. In this role, you will design and build scalable machine learning infrastructure and act as a critical technical liaison between data platforms and AI teams.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the design, prototyping, and deployment of scalable machine learning infrastructure that can power Zillow AI Mode
• Serve as a critical technical liaison between the Agentic Data Platform and applied AI teams
• Collaborate closely with scientists, engineers, and product partners to understand their dependencies and deliver the data foundations they need to innovate rapidly
• Drive alignment on timelines, architectures, and prioritization across different organizations
• Deploy and optimize capabilities in production environments, ensuring high availability, low latency, and efficient resource utilization capable of handling massive scale
• Foster a culture of rapid innovation, frugality, and engineering excellence
• Mentor other engineers, guiding them in using the right technologies and establishing best practices
• Translate complex ML infrastructure designs and ambiguous customer problems into clear, actionable insights for diverse audiences

Requirements:

• 6+ years of hands-on expertise building, scaling, and operating large scale data and ML infrastructure, including production-grade pipelines, feature stores, model-serving layers or end-to-end ML systems
• Deep understanding of Machine Learning fundamentals and the production systems they require — data flows, serving infrastructure, observability, and evaluation
• Familiarity with agentic patterns including orchestration, tool use, skill-based architectures, memory, and retrieval strategies (embeddings, hybrid search, ranking)
• Proficiency with agentic AI frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, LangChain, Agents SDK), large-scale data processing (Spark, Databricks, Airflow), cloud platforms (AWS preferred), and vector stores
• Python required
• Proven ability to build strong cross-functional relationships
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with a track record of clearly articulating technical trade-offs to both engineering peers and executive leadership
• Deep understanding of software design patterns, distributed systems architecture, and operational excellence (CI/CD, monitoring, A/B testing)
• Comfort operating in a fast-paced, sometimes ambiguous 'startup-like' environment within a larger enterprise, embracing a 'build, learn, and pivot' mentality
• Advanced degree (M.S. or Ph.D.) in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field
• Experience building foundational infrastructure for agentic systems or real-time AI applications
• Experience with regulated, private, or sensitive data at scale