Job Description
At Zendesk, our mission is simple: make customer experiences better. With 125,000+ global brands (like Airbnb, Uber, JetBrains, and Slack) relying on us, our products help billions of people get support every day.
The AI/ML Platform team powers every AI-driven experience at Zendesk. We're building robust infrastructure to support the next generation of GenAI applications from LLM proxies and evaluation frameworks to multi-step AI agents.
We're looking for a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to help drive this charge. You'll develop secure, scalable, developer-friendly platforms that empower AI teams across Zendesk to deliver faster, smarter, and safer experiences.
You'll work closely with Staff Engineers, Tech Leads, Product Managers, and other ML teams to deliver robust, production-grade systems that accelerate the impact of AI across Zendesk.
What you get to do every day
* Build and improve GenAI infrastructure including LLM proxies, benchmarking tools (A/B, offline evals), and orchestration systems.
* Contribute to the design and implementation of Zendesk's LLM Proxy to enable safe, observable, and cost-optimized access to multiple foundation models.
* Enable agentic workflows and tool-using AI systems that integrate deeply with Zendesk products
* Drive engineering best practices around observability, security, reliability, and cost attribution
* Partner cross-functionally with ML, product, and infra teams to support varied product use cases
What you bring to the role
* 5+ years building and deploying ML systems at scale
* Strong experience with ML platform components: model registries, feature stores, inference systems
* Solid understanding of LLM ecosystems and GenAI infrastructure (vector DBs, serving layers, orchestration tools)
* Proficiency in Python, Java, Scala, Go, or Ruby
* Experience with cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, or Azure), Kubernetes, Docker, and distributed systems
* Strong CI/CD, testing, and service architecture experience
* Experience taking projects from design to production deployment, with a focus on maintainability and performance.
Bonus points for
* Experience with agentic workflows or automation using LLMs
* Building dev tools that boost productivity across teams
Our tech stack
* Our code is written in Python.
* Our servers live in AWS.
* LLM Vendors: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Llama
* Infra: Kubernetes, Docker, Kafka, AWS
We welcome applicants from all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. If you're excited about this role, but not sure you meet every requirement we still want to hear from you.
Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.
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.