Staff Machine Learning Engineer

Job Description

Zendesk’s people have one goal in mind: to make Customer Experience better. Our products help more than 125,000 global brands (AirBnb, Uber, JetBrains, Slack, among others) make their billions of customers happy, every day.

As a Staff Machine Learning Engineer at Zendesk, you will play a pivotal role in our mission to transform data into actionable intelligence powering intelligent business solutions at scale. You’ll leverage your expertise in data curation, scalable system design, and LLMOps to architect and deliver enterprise-grade machine learning and generative AI systems—enabling rapid innovation from ideation to production. This is a hands-on technical leadership position for engineers passionate about building robust, high-impact ML and LLM applications and empowering business teams to make data-driven decisions.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect & Build Scalable ML/LLM Solutions

  • Design, implement, and optimize end-to-end machine learning and LLM pipelines, ensuring robustness, scalability, and adaptability to changing business requirements.

  • Drive best-in-class practices for data curation, system reliability, versioning, and automation (CI/CD, monitoring, data contracts, compliance) for ML deployments at scale.
     

• Operate at Scale with LLMOps

  • Lead the adoption of modern LLMOps and MLOps tooling and principles such as reproducibility, observability, automation, and model governance across our cloud-based infrastructure (AWS, Snowflake, dbt, Docker/Kubernetes).
     

• Initiate and Own Projects from Conception to Production

  • Identify and assess new business opportunities where applied machine learning or LLMs create impact. Rapidly move concepts from prototype to full production solutions enabling measurable business value.

  • Collaborate closely with product, engineering, analytics, and business stakeholders to define requirements, set measurable goals, and deliver production-grade outcomes.
     

• Technical & Cross-functional Leadership

  • Mentor and guide ML engineers and data scientists, promoting technical excellence, engineering best practices, and a culture of innovation and velocity.

  • Serve as a technical thought leader and trusted advisor, explaining complex architectural decisions in clear, actionable terms to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
     

• Advance Engineering & Business Impact

  • Evangelize engineering best practices and frameworks that enable high-quality delivery, system reliability, and strong data governance.

  • Translate analytical insights into business outcomes, helping organizations realize the ROI of AI/ML investments.

Job Requirements

• 5+ years of hands-on experience in machine learning, ML engineering, or data science, with a track record of technical leadership in delivering production ML/LLM systems at scale. (Staff or Principal-level experience preferred.)

• Deep expertise in architecting and building scalable ML/LLM applications and infrastructure, including experience with cloud-native platforms (AWS, Snowflake, dbt, Docker, Kubernetes) and automation pipelines (CI/CD, monitoring, data ops).

• Proven skills in data curation, feature engineering, and managing large-scale data sets for robust ML productionization.

• Demonstrated experience taking projects from business case through architecture, development, deployment, and continuous improvement.

• Fluent in Python and modern ML/data stack, with proficiency in big data processing and distributed pipelines.

• Business-oriented mindset: able to align technical decisions with business goals, communicate value to stakeholders, and drive projects that produce measurable impact.

• Outstanding communicator with the ability to distill complex technical topics into understandable insights for varied audiences.

• Recognized as an innovator and advocate for engineering best practices and the latest advancements in AI/ML and LLM technologies.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field required; advanced degree strongly preferred.

Why Zendesk?

• Shape the future of AI-driven customer experience at global scale, directly impacting billions of end-users.

• Collaborate with top-tier ML and data talent in a supportive, innovative environment.

• Lead in an organization where your technical vision and business acumen will drive company-wide transformation.

• Enjoy competitive compensation, benefits, and accelerated career growth with a global technology leader.

Ready to lead the next evolution of scalable AI at Zendesk? Apply now and help us set the new standard in enterprise machine learning and generative AI.

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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.

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 peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request.