Zapier

Engineering Manager, MCP, Model Context Protocol

Zapier

full-time

Posted on:

Origin:  • 🇺🇸 United States

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Salary

💰 $187,800 - $281,700 per year

Job Level

Mid-LevelSenior

Tech Stack

Distributed SystemsDjangoDockerJavaScriptKubernetesNext.jsNode.jsPostgresPythonReactRedisTerraformTypeScript

About the role

  • Zapier is a 100% remote company that values asynchronous communication, transparent collaboration, and scalable systems. It’s building a platform to help millions of businesses automate workflows with AI and automation, including MCP (Model Context Protocol). Zapier aims to be the leading MCP provider and connects AI assistants to 8000+ applications.
  • The Engineering Manager for MCP will lead a team of 4-5 engineers, spend 50-75% of time on people management and the rest on hands-on engineering, architecture decisions, and customer engagement.
  • You’ll write production code (~25% of time) using AI-first practices, collaborate with AI model providers (Anthropic/OpenAI), and partner with GTM teams for technical sales feedback.
  • You’ll shape technical strategy for MCP, ensure secure auth models and integration patterns, and align with Zapier’s platform infrastructure. You’ll monitor the competitive landscape and emerging standards to stay at the forefront of MCP.
  • Zapier is a fully remote company and emphasizes culture, diversity, and opportunity for career growth across a global team.

Requirements

  • You’re familiar with MCP and the AI tooling landscape. You have experience with AI assistant development, integration design, or developer tooling. Bonus points if you've built with MCP, worked with AI model providers, or contributed to open-source protocol standards.
  • You're a hands-on technical leader. You enjoy spending a portion of your time writing production code and solving complex technical problems alongside your team. You've led project planning & execution, shaped architectural decisions, and have experience shipping AI-powered products end-to-end.
  • You thrive in emerging technology spaces. You're comfortable with ambiguity and rapid change. You can navigate unclear requirements, evolving standards, and shifting market dynamics while building production-ready solutions. You’ve successfully handled the tension of long vs. short-term tradeoffs.
  • You're customer-obsessed and strategic. You get energy from engaging directly with customers, understanding their needs, and translating those into technical decisions. You think about both immediate customer value and long-term market positioning.
  • You're a people and cultural leader. You have a track record of developing talent and fostering ownership of shared goals. You build cultures where diverse perspectives thrive and knowledge flows freely.
  • You're a self-starter comfortable with ambiguity. You take initiative without needing top-down direction and can turn loosely defined problems into concrete plans. You bias toward action, especially when next steps aren't obvious, while bringing others along with your vision.
  • You have strong engineering fundamentals. You're experienced with our tech stack and comfortable with developer experience design, authentication systems, and distributed systems architecture. You understand AI/ML systems in production and have worked with LLMs to ship products previously.