Principal Software Development Engineer

About the team

The Copilot Experience team is responsible for creating AI‑powered user experiences that enable users to interact with Zillow’s agentic skills, providing them with a true copilot throughout their home-finding journey. We’re building application features that adapt to our users, with dynamic UIs, personalized content, and multimodal interaction through text, voice, and images. Our mission is to set the bar for how consumers collaborate with AI in real estate, from search and discovery through decision-making and action.

About the role

In this role, you will play a pivotal role in evolving our UX framework and architectural components to support multiple AI experiences at scale, on Zillow as well as with 3P integrations. You will balance architecture, project leadership, and hands-on development to help us deliver our most critical projects. Success requires deep modern web development expertise (e.g., React, TypeScript, CSS) and robust microservices experience across the middle tier, including backend‑for‑frontend (BFF) patterns. You will champion operational excellence, employ modern design patterns, and set high bars for performance, scalability, and resilience. You will also mentor and guide other engineers, establish best practices, and collaborate across teams so multiple product groups can contribute features and we can continuously integrate new agentic AI skills.

You Will Get To:

• Evolve the UX architecture for AI copilot experiences on Zillow’s web and mobile platforms, as well as 3P integrations, with a strong focus on performance, reliability, and scale.

• Lead and ship high‑impact, consumer‑facing features that showcase multimodal AI (text, voice, image/video) and dynamic, AI‑personalized interfaces.

• Build platform and BFF layers that enable multiple teams to contribute new capabilities and rapidly onboard additional agentic AI skills.

• Rapidly prototype experiences to validate concepts, inform design, and de‑risk complex initiatives while maintaining a path to production quality.

• Mentor engineers, drive technical writing quality, set engineering standards, and influence cross‑functional partners without formal authority.

• Own and improve operational excellence—observability, performance, CI/CD quality, and safe rollouts—across critical consumer experiences.

READ about our latest accomplishments!

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, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Washington state, and Washington DC the standard base pay range for this role is $191,300.00 - $305,700.00 annually. This base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations. In Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont the standard base pay range for this role is $181,800.00 - $290,400.00 annually. The base pay range is specific to these locations 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. Employees in this role will not be paid below the salary threshold for exempt employees in the state where they reside.

Who you are

• A builder with a proven track record of delivering rich, user‑facing applications to production at scale.

• A pragmatic technologist who leverages AI tools in development workflows to move faster and improve quality.

• A fast prototype practitioner who can demonstrate feasibility, clarify requirements, and surface risks early.

• An impeccable technical writer who communicates designs, tradeoffs, and decisions with clarity.

• An influencer who can lead without authority, align stakeholders, and drive outcomes across teams.

Qualifications

• Master’s in Computer Science/Computer Engineering, or equivalent industry experience.

• Proficiency in web development with React, Type