What You Can Expect
As a Staff Software Development Engineer on the Onyx team, you'll work at the intersection of enterprise search and generative AI, contributing to a platform that processes millions of queries weekly for organizations like NASA and Hudson River Trading. This is a high-ownership, high-impact role on a small, founder-led team: you'll drive problems from initial discovery through production, with direct visibility into customer outcomes and the open-source community. Working closely with Zoom's AI research and product teams, you'll shape both the technical direction of a growing product and the engineering practices that support it. This position requires on-site presence five (5) days per week at our San Francisco, CA office. Remote or hybrid arrangements are not available for this role.
About the Team
Onyx joined Zoom through acquisition and is building enterprise search and an AI platform for security-conscious organizations. In under three years, the platform grew to hundreds of thousands of users, over one million queries per week, and 30,000 GitHub stars, serving customers including NASA, Hudson River Trading, and Nebius. Our team of roughly a dozen engineers operates across the full product line, from infrastructure and engineering to customer relationships, and works in close collaboration with Zoom's AI research teams on LLMs, classifiers, and embedding models.
Responsibilities
- Build capabilities across the Onyx platform that translate advances in NLP and generative AI into reliable, high-value customer experiences.
- Solve deep technical challenges in search quality, scalability, and performance at the scale of terabytes of enterprise data.
- Own problems from discovery through design, implementation, and production operation, with full accountability for customer outcomes.
- Collaborate with Zoom's AI and product teams to develop integrations that amplify value across both product lines and deepen Onyx's competitive position.
- Develop fluency across a modern stack (React, Python, Postgres, AWS) and adapt readily to additional technologies as the product evolves.
- Shape technical direction and engineering practices as the team and product scale.
- Contribute across the full scope of a growing product line, including engineering, infrastructure, rollouts, and exposure to go-to-market initiatives.
What We're Looking For
- Demonstrated engineering judgment and deep craft, applied through direct exposure to customers and the open-source community to deliver features that meaningfully improve user experience.
- A track record of taking ambiguous problems to reliable solutions with high ownership and substantial, measurable results.
- Proficiency with the latest AI development tools, paired with clear opinions on maintaining quality, reliability, and maintainability as engineering practices evolve.
- Strong backend engineering experience in complex, data-intensive systems; frontend skills are a plus.
- Experience building and operating enterprise software at the reliability, security, and scale demanded by large customers.
- Comfort thriving in a fast-moving environment while effectively navigating collaboration across a larger engineering organization.
- An appetite for broad contribution across a growing product and business, from core engineering and infrastructure through go-to-market exposure.
Salary Range or On Target Earnings:
In addition to the base salary and/or OTE listed Zoom has a Total Direct Compensation philosophy that takes into consideration; base salary, bonus and equity value.
Note: Starting pay will be based on a number of factors and commensurate with qualifications & experience.
We also have a location based compensation structure; there may be a different range for candidates in this and other locations
At Zoom, we offer a window of at least 5 days for you to apply because we believe in giving you every opportunity. Below is the potential closing date, just in case you want to mark it on your calendar. We look forward to receiving your application!
Anticipated Position Close Date:
Ways of Working
Our structured hybrid approach is centered around our offices and remote work environments. The work style of each role, Hybrid, Remote, or In-Person is indicated in the job description/posting.
Benefits
As part of our award-winning workplace culture and commitment to delivering happiness, our benefits program offers a variety of perks, benefits, and options to help employees maintain their physical, mental, emotional, and financial health; support work-life balance; and contribute to their community in meaningful ways. Click Learn for more information.
About Us
Zoomies help people stay connected so they can get more done together. We set out to build the best collaboration platform for the enterprise, and today help people communicate better with products like Zoom Contact Center, Zoom Phone, Zoom Events, Zoom Apps, Zoom Rooms, and Zoom Webinars.
We’re problem-solvers, working at a fast pace to design solutions with our customers and users in mind. Find room to grow with opportunities to stretch your skills and advance your career in a collaborative, growth-focused environment.
Our Commitment
At Zoom, we believe great work happens when people feel supported and empowered. We’re committed to fair hiring practices that ensure every candidate is evaluated based on skills, experience, and potential. If you require an accommodation during the hiring process, let us know—we’re here to support you at every step.
If you need assistance navigating the interview process due to a medical disability, please submit an Accommodations Request Form and someone from our team will reach out soon. This form is solely for applicants who require an accommodation due to a qualifying medical disability. Non-accommodation-related requests, such as application follow-ups or technical issues, will not be addressed.
Our interviews are supported by BrightHire, a tool that helps us create a consistent and thoughtful interview experience and may include recordings. Please refer to our candidate privacy statement for more information of how we use your data.
Skills Required
- Demonstrated engineering judgment and deep software engineering craft
- Direct exposure to customers and the open-source community
- Track record of taking ambiguous problems to reliable solutions with measurable results
- Proficiency with current AI development tools
- Strong backend engineering experience in complex, data-intensive systems
- Experience building and operating enterprise software with high reliability, security, and scalability requirements
- Frontend engineering skills
- Ability to collaborate effectively across a larger engineering organization
- Willingness to contribute across engineering, infrastructure, and go-to-market activities
Zoom Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Zoom and has not been reviewed or approved by Zoom.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Compensation is positioned at or above market for many roles, and postings often include clear pay ranges that help set expectations. Market standing among similar-size tech firms reinforces the perception of strong total rewards.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity grants and an ESPP are prominent parts of the package and can materially augment cash compensation. Stock components are framed as a meaningful contributor to overall pay satisfaction.
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Healthcare Strength — Medical plan choice is broad and paired with free dental and vision for employees and dependents, plus robust mental-health resources and disability coverage. These elements position core health benefits as a standout strength.
Zoom Insights
What We Do
Bring teams together, reimagine workspaces, engage new audiences, and delight your customers –– all on the Zoom platform you know and love. 💙 Zoomies help people stay connected so they can get more done together. We set out on a mission to make video communications frictionless and secure by building the world’s best video product for the enterprise, but we didn’t stop there. With products like AI Companion, Team Chat, Contact Center, Phone, Events, Rooms, Webinar, and more, we bring innovation to a wide variety of customers, from the conference room to the classroom, from doctor’s offices to financial institutions to government agencies, from global brands to small businesses. We do what we do because of our core value of Care: care for our community, our customers, our company, our teammates, and ourselves. Our global employees help our customers meet happier, communicate better, and create meaningful connections the world over. Zoomies are problem-solvers and self-starters, working hard to get results and moving quickly to design solutions with our customers and users in mind. Here, you’ll work across teams to dig deep into impactful projects that are changing the way people communicate, and find room to grow with opportunities to stretch your skills and advance your career in a diverse, inclusive environment. Learn more about careers at Zoom by visiting our careers site: https://careers.zoom.us/home
