Staff Machine Learning Engineer – AI Agent

Zendesk

Staff Machine Learning Engineer at Zendesk building AI-driven support solutions. Lead design and development of AI Agent capabilities for exceptional customer service experiences.

Posted 5/12/2026full-timeSan Francisco • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $246,000 - $368,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

Python

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Lead the design and development of AI Agent capabilities that can understand customer intent, follow conversation context, take reliable actions, and deliver helpful resolutions.
Build agentic workflows that connect reasoning, retrieval, tool use, policy guidance, and human handoff into seamless customer support experiences.
Partner with product, design, engineering, and research teams to turn customer problems into polished AI-powered product features.
Improve the quality, reliability, and safety of AI Agent behavior through evaluation frameworks, feedback loops, observability, and iterative experimentation.
Design systems that enable AI Agents to use Zendesk data, knowledge, business rules, and third-party integrations effectively and securely.
Drive technical direction across teams, helping define patterns for scalable agent architecture, orchestration, testing, and production readiness.
Identify opportunities to improve resolution rates, reduce friction for customers and agents, and make AI-driven support feel natural, trustworthy, and useful.
Mentor engineers and raise the bar for technical execution, product thinking, and responsible AI development.

Requirements

What you’ll need

6+ years building production software, AI-powered products, or large-scale intelligent systems.
Experience leading technical design and execution for complex product or platform initiatives.
Hands-on experience with LLM-based applications, conversational systems, agent orchestration, retrieval systems, or AI workflow automation.
Strong programming skills in Python or equivalent backend languages.
Experience with production-quality systems, including APIs, distributed services, observability, testing, and reliability practices.
Familiarity with LLM evaluation, prompt and policy management, safety guardrails, tool calling, and feedback-driven improvement loops.
Experience mentoring senior engineers or setting technical direction across multiple teams.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Flexible work arrangements
Professional development opportunities
Bonuses

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

AI Agent developmentLLM-based applicationsconversational systemsagent orchestrationretrieval systemsAI workflow automationPythonAPIsdistributed servicesobservability

Soft Skills

technical design leadershipmentoringproduct thinkingresponsible AI developmentcollaborationproblem-solvingcommunicationiterative experimentationfeedback-driven improvementcustomer focus