Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Zillow is seeking a highly experienced, product-minded Senior Machine Learning Engineer to anchor their Agentic Data Foundations team. In this role, you will design and build scalable machine learning infrastructure and serve 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. You excel at leading collaborative efforts, creating buy-in for your architectural vision, and driving execution across matrixed teams
• 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