Senior Software Engineer, Internal AI

Zip

Application engineer leading the Internal AI team at Zip. Building central capabilities to enhance AI adoption and streamline engineering collaboration.

Posted 4/24/2026full-timeSan Francisco • California • 🇺🇸 United StatesSenior💰 $200,000 - $240,000 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

Node.jsPython

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Build central platform capabilities that multiply the rest of the org. Ship the services, agents, centralized products, and MCP integrations that non-software engineer teams use as building blocks — the hub in our hub-and-spoke.
Be the architecture funnel for non-product AI. Review use cases coming out of every non-product team. Recommend the right path — off-the-shelf tool, Claude skill, Notion agent, no-code (n8n / Workato), or custom build. Squash the large majority of low-value vibe-coded ideas before they consume engineering or security cycles.
Hold the application-layer bar. You set and enforce application-level standards: integration patterns, data handling, identity, evals, observability.
Be the single interface into core Engineering. When something genuinely needs infrastructure — hosting, production scheduling, new data in the warehouse — you are the funnel point from the business into Foundations and Security. Triaged, reduced, sequenced, spec’d, so other teams aren’t each having the same conversation three times.
Ship when building is the right call. When no off-the-shelf path fits, you build — to production standards. Reviewed, version-controlled, observable, documented, owned. Never orphaned.

Requirements

What you’ll need

6+ years building and operating backend applications in production. Bias toward application, integration, and data-pipeline work rather than pure infrastructure.
Real infrastructure sensibility. You understand hosting, identity, secrets, and data flow well enough to collaborate credibly with a core infrastructure team.
Strong architectural vocabulary. Comfortable reviewing others’ designs (engineers and non-engineers) and saying “use this pattern, not that one” with empathy.
Pragmatist. Picks the smallest tool that works — sometimes Python/Node, sometimes n8n, frequently “don’t build it, here’s an existing skill you should use with Claude Cowork”.
Hands-on with modern AI tooling: Claude Code, Cowork, MCP, LLM APIs, evals. Opinionated about where AI is the wrong solution.
Strong communicator. Much of this role is consulting engineers and non-engineers and holding a line without becoming a blocker.
Comfortable in ambiguity. The function is new and the paved roads don’t fully exist yet.

Benefits

Comp & perks

Start-up equity
100% health, vision & dental coverage options
Catered breakfast, lunch, & dinner
Flexible PTO
ClassPass membership
Monthly commuter benefit
Team building events & happy hours
Home office stipend
Phone/internet reimbursement
Paid parental leave
Fertility stipend
401k plan
Unlimited AI token usage

ATS Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

backend application developmentdata pipelineintegration patternsdata handlingobservabilityapplication architectureAI toolingPythonNodeno-code tools

Soft Skills

strong communicationconsultingempathypragmatismcomfort in ambiguitycollaborationreviewing designsproblem-solvingtriagingsequencing