- Educational Background: Minimum of 10 years of related experience with a Bachelor’s degree; or 6 years and a Master’s degree; or a PhD with 3 years experience; or equivalent experience.
- Software Engineering Experience: 10+ years of professional experience building, testing, deploying, and operating production software, including hands-on delivery of AI or ML-enabled applications beyond prototypes.
- Python or TypeScript: Strong experience with Python or TypeScript and modern software engineering practices, including API design, automated testing, distributed services, and debugging across application, model, and tool boundaries.
- Production AI Engineering: Practical experience building applications using LLM tool calling, structured outputs, retrieval-augmented generation, and agent or workflow orchestration.
- Model Evaluation and Selection: Ability to evaluate classification quality, uncertainty, fallback strategies, and different model or system approaches using measurable outcomes such as task success, latency, reliability, and total inference cost.
- Engineering Craftsmanship: Experience with cloud deployment, automated testing, CI/CD, observability, identity and access controls, secrets management, retries, idempotency, and failure recovery in production systems.
- AI Engineering Judgment: Strong judgment about when a problem should be solved with deterministic software, retrieval, a model, or a combination of approaches, as well as when an agent should ask for clarification or hand work to a person.
- Ownership and Collaboration: Ability to independently deliver complex technical work within shared architecture standards while collaborating effectively with Principal and Staff Engineers, Product, domain engineering teams, Security, and Risk. You communicate tradeoffs clearly, contribute thoughtful code reviews, and help strengthen engineering practices across the team.
- AI-Enabled Engineering: Hands-on experience using AI-assisted development tools as part of your day-to-day engineering workflow to develop, debug, test, evaluate, and improve software while applying sound engineering judgment to AI-generated solutions.
- Bonus Points: Experience with Google Cloud, Google ADK, Model Garden, or equivalent managed AI platforms; semantic routing; open-weight models; Model Context Protocol (MCP); reusable agent-development frameworks; Azure integrations; or payments, fintech, or other environments where correctness, auditability, and controlled access are essential.
What you will get in return
Zip is a place where you'll get out what you put in. The newness of our sector means we need to move at pace and embrace change, and our promise to you when you join the team is that you'll feel empowered and trusted to make big things happen quickly.
We want you to feel welcome and supported to be yourself and care for yourself at work. You'll have opportunities to grow your skills and your career, surrounded by smart, friendly people and leaders who have your back.
- Flexible working culture and incentive programs
- Unlimited PTO, generous paid parental leave and leading family support policies
- Company-sponsored 401k match
- Learning and wellness subscription stipend
- Union Square office with a casual dress code
- Employer-sponsored insurance for you and your dependents, with several 100% Zip-covered choices available
The annual base Pay Range for this position is $162,000 - $205,000. This range reflects our US national compensation (USN). Additional premium percentages may apply based on our tiered premium strategy.
Subject to those same considerations, the total compensation package for this position may also include other elements, including a bonus and/or equity awards, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits.
If hired, employees will be in an 'at-will position' and the Company reserves the right to modify base salary (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation or benefit program) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, Company or individual department/team performance, and market factors.
Be a part of a team that reflects the diversity of our customers
We pride ourselves on being a workplace that provides equal opportunities to people of all ages, cultural backgrounds, sexual orientations, gender identities, abilities, veteran status, and everything else that makes you unique.
Equally, we’re committed to ensuring our recruitment processes are accessible and inclusive. Please let us know if there are any adjustments that need to be made to ensure you have a fair and equitable experience.
And finally…get to know us
Zip is a global ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ company that gives our millions of customers simpler and fairer ways to pay.
We are proud to be a global business built around our US and ANZ core markets working with merchant partners including Amazon, Best Buy, eBay and Uber. United by our mission, purpose and values - Customer First, Own It, Stronger Together & Change The Game - we are the next generation of payments, helping people across the globe to fearlessly take control of their financial future.
We are Zip, and we are just getting started.
Before you apply, give Zip a try -> rebrand.ly/check-zip-out