Principal Software Development Engineer, Big Data

About the team

The Agentic AI team at Zillow is at the forefront of transforming the real estate industry by helping millions of people use AI technologies to find their next home. We aim to redefine the home shopping and transaction experience by providing an always-on, multimodal assistant that integrates deep user and home insights, along with sophisticated reasoning.

The Agentic AI team iterates quickly and solves problems at the forefront of AI product development. This role requires an entrepreneurial approach and a driven curiosity about the constantly evolving field of LLMs and AI-powered assistants and co-pilots.

About the role

We’re seeking a Principal SDE (big data) on the Agentic AI team, to lead implementation of multi-agent system infrastructure across Zillow. You will enable the Agentic AI team, and teams across Zillow, to implement innovative agentic experiences, using shared assets and infrastructure, at scale and low latency. You will enable fast interaction and quick scaling to production.  

We are seeking a collaborative, customer-focused, and product-minded engineer, and expert in prototyping and scaled infrastructure to invent collaboratively with multiple stakeholders.

• Apply a growth-mindset and first principles to ambiguous customer problems to rapidly iterate on novel solutions and ways of working.
• Collaborate closely with applied scientists, engineering, design and research to understand, scope, design, prototype, implement and iterate on internal and external facing systems supporting and implementing next generation AI applications.
• Lead efforts to deploy machine learning powered customer applications into production.
• Cultivate connections with other teams for critical dependencies and infrastructure.
• Contribute to carrying and growing our team culture of rapid innovation and creative frugality.
   

This role has been categorized as a Remote position. “Remote” employees do not have a permanent corporate office workplace and, instead, work from a physical location of their choice, which must be identified to the Company. U.S. employees may live in any of the 50 United States, with limited exceptions.

In California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state, and Washington DC the standard base pay range for this role is $186,700.00 - $298,300.00 Annually. This base pay range is specific to California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state, and Washington DC and may not be applicable to other locations.

In addition to a competitive base salary this position is also eligible for equity awards based on factors such as experience, performance and location. Actual amounts will vary depending on experience, performance and location.

Who you are

• Proven track record shipping business-critical front-end and back-end systems with high availability, low latency, and robust fault-tolerance.
• Deep experience with big data streaming for analytics and logging at massive scale.
• Experience developing platforms optimized for ease of adoption and operations.
• Expert proficiency with scaled backed services (for example, Python & FastAPI) with multiple internal consumers.
• The communication skills to influence, collaborate with, and educate ICs and leadership within our team and across the organization.
• Experience prototyping, developing, and implementing new products and features with new technologies and diverse data.
• Experience making effective decisions and managing ambiguous project work.
• Comfortable prototyping and presenting new and abstract ideas in design review and soliciting feedback.
• Experience with pioneering products and technology
• The tenacity to embrace and tackle challenging problems.
• Practiced technical ability and passion for both owning implementation and contributing technical/thought leadership for a team of world-class scientists engineers.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in Computer Science, or a related field.

Bonus Qualifications:

• Experience with Agentic applications, generative AI or large language models (LLMs) and related technologies (LangGraph, MCP, knowledge retrieval solutions, for example).
• Expert proficiency with web development (HTML, CSS, and frameworks, for example, React/TS)
• Experience with regulated, private or sensitive data, document understanding, user interest modeling, or reinforcement learning.
• Experience collaborating with science, engineering, design, research and product part