Staff Machine Learning Engineer

Zendesk WorkFromHome

Stellenbeschreibung:

Job Description

Zendesk’s people have one goal in mind: to make Customer Experience better. Our products help more than 145,000 global brands (AirBnb, Uber, JetBrains, Slack, among others) make their billions of customers happy, every day.

Our team is dedicated to providing a robust full‑text search experience for our customers across multiple channels, including help centers and agentic RAG (retrieval‑augmented‑generation) bots. In collaboration with ML engineers and scientists, we deliver high‑quality AI products leveraging the latest tools and techniques, and serve them at a scale that most companies can only dream of. We’re passionate about empowering end‑users to find what they’re looking for, and helping our customers get the most out of their knowledge base.

We’re looking for a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to join our team and play a key role in leveling up the search platform powering Zendesk!

What you’ll be doing

Delivering AI‑powered capabilities to our customers at Zendesk scale using latest LLM technologies
Working closely with Product Management, ML Scientists and fellow Engineers both within the team and across the company to define feature scope and implementation strategies, using ML technology
Mentoring junior team members, as well as pairing with more experienced colleagues to foster mutual learning
Supporting our deployed services to ensure a high level of stability and reliability
Writing clean and maintainable code to meet the team’s delivery commitments
Contributing to discussions regarding technical design and best practices
Here some of the challenges you will be working on:

How do we expand our RAG platform to handle new use cases?
How do we integrate and improve hybrid search solutions combining vector embeddings and keyword‑based retrieval?
How do we enhance the ranking of search results?
How do we optimize our indexing pipeline for speed and cost‑efficiency?
How do we best provide a retrieval platform across multiple channels?
How do we make the best use of rapidly evolving LLM technologies?
And many more!

Basic Qualifications

Proficiency in programming languages such as Python or Ruby, along with experience in relevant testing frameworks
Solid understanding of architecture and software design patterns for server‑side and web applications
Collaborative and growth mindset, with a commitment to ongoing learning and development
Self‑managed, dedicated approach with the ability to work independently
Experience building scalable and stable software applications
Ability to formulate hypotheses, conduct experiments, and analyze results to inform engineering decisions

Preferred Qualifications

Experience in designing, implementing, and optimizing search solutions, ideally leveraging Machine Learning techniques and Elasticsearch to enhance search relevance and performance
Experience with managing and deploying cloud services with AWS
Experience with event‑driven, distributed architecture using Kafka

Tech Stack

Our codebase is primarily written in Python and Ruby
Our machine learning models rely on PyTorch
Our platform is built on AWS
Data is stored in RDS MySQL, Redis, S3, ElasticSearch, Kafka, and Snowflake
Services are deployed on Kubernetes using Docker, Kafka is used for stream processing
Infrastructure health is monitored using Datadog and Sentry

What we offer

Team of passionate people who love what they do
Exciting opportunity to work on RAG (retrieval‑augmented‑generation), a rapidly evolving field in AI and natural language processing
Ownership of the product features at scale, making a significant impact for millions of customers
Opportunity to learn and grow
Possibility to specialise in areas such as security, performance, and reliability

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.