Zendesk’s people have one goal in mind: to make Customer Experience better. Our products help more than 145,000 global brands (AirBnb, Uber, JetBrains, Slack, among others) make their billions of customers happy, every day.
Our team is dedicated to providing a robust full-text search experience for our customers across multiple channels; including help centers and agentic RAG (retrieval-augmented-generation) bots. In collaboration with ML engineers and scientists, we deliver high-quality AI products leveraging the latest tools and techniques, and serve them at a scale that most companies can only dream of. We’re passionate about empowering end-users to find what they’re looking for, and helping our customers get the most out of their knowledge base.
We’re looking for a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to join our team and play a key role in leveling up the search platform powering Zendesk!
What you’ll be doing
- Delivering AI-powered capabilities to our customers at Zendesk scale using latest LLM technologies
- Working closely with Product Management, ML Scientists and fellow Engineers both within the team and across the company to define feature scope and implementation strategies, using ML technology
- Mentoring junior team members, as well as pairing with more experienced colleagues to foster mutual learning
- Supporting our deployed services to ensure a high level of stability and reliability
- Writing clean and maintainable code to meet the team’s delivery commitments
- Contributing to discussions regarding technical design and best practices
- Here some of the challenges you will be working on:
- How do we expand our RAG platform to handle new use cases?
- How do we integrate and improve hybrid search solutions combining vector embeddings and keyword-base retrieval?
- How do we enhance the ranking of search results?
- How do we optimize our indexing pipeline for speed and cost-efficiency?
- How do we best provide a retrieval platform across multiple channels?
- How do we make the best use of rapidly evolving LLM technologies?
- And many more!
- Basic Qualifications
- Proficiency in programming languages such as Python or Ruby, along with experience in relevant testing frameworks
- Solid understanding of architecture and software design patterns for server-side and web applications
- Collaborative and growth mindset, with a commitment to ongoing learning and development
- Self-managed, dedicated approach with the ability to work independently
- Experience building scalable and stable software applications
- Ability to formulate hypotheses, conduct experiments, and analyze results to inform engineering decisions
- Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience in designing, implementing, and optimizing search solutions, ideally leveraging Machine Learning techniques and Elasticsearch to enhance search relevance and performance
- Experience with managing and deploying cloud services with AWS
- Experience with event-driven, distributed architecture using Kafka
- Our codebase is primarily written in Python and Ruby
- Our machine learning models rely on PyTorch
- Our platform is built on AWS
- Data is stored in RDS MySQL, Redis, S3, ElasticSearch, Kafka, and Snowflake
- Services are deployed on Kubernetes using Docker, Kafka is used for stream processing
- Infrastructure health is monitored using Datadog and Sentry
- Team of passionate people who love what they do!
- Exciting opportunity to work on RAG (retrieval-augmented-generation), a rapidly evolving field in AI and natural language processing
- Ownership of the product features at scale, making a significant impact for millions of customers
- Opportunity to learn and grow!
- Possibility to specialise in areas such as security, performance, and reliability
- Team of passionate people who love what they do!
- Exciting opportunity to work on RAG (retrieval-augmented-generation), a rapidly evolving field in AI and natural language processing
- Ownership of the product features at scale, making a significant impact for millions of customers
- Opportunity to learn and grow!
- Possibility to specialise in areas such as security, performance, and reliability
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 [email protected] with your specific accommodation request.
Skills Required
- Proficiency in Python or Ruby
- Experience with relevant testing frameworks
- Solid understanding of architecture and software design patterns for server-side and web applications
- Collaborative and growth mindset
- Ability to work independently and self-manage
- Experience building scalable and stable software applications
- Ability to formulate hypotheses, conduct experiments, and analyze results
- Experience designing, implementing, and optimizing search solutions using ML and Elasticsearch
- Experience managing and deploying cloud services with AWS
- Experience with event-driven, distributed architecture using Kafka
- Experience with PyTorch (ML model development)
Zendesk Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Zendesk and has not been reviewed or approved by Zendesk.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — The company states a commitment to publishing base pay ranges and advancing pay equity, helping employees gauge fairness. Public messaging on pay equity and transparency signals structured, consistent compensation practices.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time away programs include flexible PTO, dedicated well‑being days, emergency time off, and pregnancy loss leave. Parental leave is described as generous, and travel support exists for reproductive care where access is restricted.
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Healthcare Strength — Benefits language highlights comprehensive medical, dental/vision, mental health access, and an employee assistance program. These offerings are positioned as part of holistic wellbeing support across regions.
Zendesk Insights
What We Do
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. We advocate for digital first customer experiences— and we stick with it in our workplace. Over 5,000 employees worldwide are collaborating from kitchen tables, home offices, co-working spaces, and Zendesk workspaces to make one team.
Why Work With Us
We know one desk doesn’t fit all. At Zendesk, we prioritize remote work because we believe great work happens anywhere. Digital first is more than where we work though. We give our employees flexibility and choice in both where and how they work while also trusting them to be a team player.
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