Senior ML Engineer

Job Description
Job Summary
At Zendesk, our focus is helping our customers build great relationships with their customers. Founded by three Danish entrepreneurs, Zendesk has experienced remarkable success and growth while maintaining a fun, positive, and down-to-earth culture.

We are looking for a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to join our Machine Learning team. You will be delivering AI/ML powered features for our customers at Zendesk scale.

What You'll Be Doing

• Work closely with ML Scientists to help bring ML-powered features into production and provide technical leadership across teams
• Lead discussions about technical design and architecture
• Build and guide the development of tools to support model experimentation and model management
• Collaborate with DevOps, feature teams, platform teams, and product to drive initiatives and overcome technical obstacles
• Lead initiatives around improving the scalability and robustness of our platforms
• Design, prototype, and refine scalable infrastructure, influencing best practices and mentoring teams

Required
What you bring to the role

• Fluent in at least one of Python or Ruby
• At least 5 years of background in building, scaling, and operating large scale applications, with a demonstrated ability to drive technical direction and mentor others
• Previous experience delivering ML products, or in ML operations (MLOps)
• Fluency with RESTful API, Kafka, Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud-like AWS or GCP
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and provide direction with changing priorities
• Deep respect and desire for team collaboration, while influencing and elevating team practices and technical standards
• Desire and ability to build solutions utilizing AI/ML at scale

Preferred

• Experience with either Airflow or Metaflow
• Experience with recent tooling around LLM evaluation and monitoring
• Familiar with one of the machine learning libraries such as Pytorch
• Experience with either SQL or DBT

Tech Stack

• Our code is written in Python and Ruby
• Our servers live in AWS
• Our local machine learning models rely on Pytorch
• Our ML pipelines use Airflow and Metaflow
• Our data is stored in S3, RDS MySQL and Snowflake
• Our services and models are deployed to Kubernetes using Docker
• Heavy usage of LLM technology from multiple providers

Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

The Intelligent Heart Of Customer Experience
Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we're proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to with your specific accommodation request.