Sr. Engineer - Applied AI (AI Tools, AI Code Gen)

Job Posted: 6/6/24

Location : Americas - North Central and South America and Europe

Hi there!

As Zapier continues to scale our mission to democratize automation we’re hiring for multiple Senior Applied AI Engineers for our AI Tools and AI Code Gen teams. At Zapier we have a goal to eventually provide everyone with their own personal automation assistant. We believe that the future is only possible by pairing AI with our existing robust automation systems.

Applied AI Engineering (‘AIE’) is focused on designing developing and maintaining AI-powered systems and applications for specific domains and use cases. They are responsible for applying AI models to solve real-world problems. Applied AI Engineers will also be responsible for integrating AI systems with existing software as well as troubleshooting and maintaining these systems. Finally a successful candidate will have a strong understanding of the industry or domain they are working in as well as the ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

With the rise of LLMs and associated AI tooling we believe a new class of engineering is emerging that pulls from both classical ML Research and Backend Engineering. An Applied AI Engineer has deep experience and understanding in how to work with LLMs to create new value and experiences while pulling on skills found in both ML Research and Backend Engineering. The focus of this role is on the intersection between these traditional skill sets but also requires proficiency in many of the new tooling and concepts particular to LLMs and modern AI tooling.

The AI Code Gen team is focused on scaling Zapier’s ecosystem so we can say “yes” to all automation use cases. We have lofty goals of changing the way folks think about workflows on the web which has the potential to change the core of how Zapier works.

If you’re interested in advancing your career at a fast-growing profitable impact-driven company then read on…

We know applying for and taking on a new job at any company requires a leap of faith. We want you to feel comfortable and excited to apply at Zapier. To help share a bit more about life at Zapier here are a few resources in addition to the job description that can give you an inside look at what life is like at Zapier. Hopefully you'll take the leap of faith and apply.

• Our Commitment to Applicants

• Culture and Values at Zapier

• Zapier Guide to Remote Work

• Zapier Code of Conduct

• Diversity and Inclusivity at Zapier

Zapier is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing and hiring a diverse workforce.

Even though our job description may seem like we're looking for a specific candidate the role inevitably ends up tailored to the person who applies and joins. Regardless of how well you feel you fit our description we encourage you to apply if you meet these criteria:

About You

You have 7+ years of experience. You've dedicated at least 5 of those years to building distributed  scalable web applications. You have strong communication skills problem-solving abilities and are driven to deliver outstanding customer experiences for both our external users and internal stakeholders.

Required Technical Skills/Experience:

• Familiarity with the underlying technologies like transformer networks attention mechanisms and how they contribute to the models’ abilities to generate coherent responses generate function calls and perform other language tasks.

• You have worked with LLMs to perform complicated tasks in production environments. You’re familiar with advanced prompt techniques for LLM grounding such as chain-of-thought static few-shot examples and dynamic few-shot.

• You’re proficient in deploying evaluation frameworks for LLMs focusing on performance reliability and bias assessment.

• Familiarity or experience with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (‘RAG’) systems and how to optimize knowledge retrieval for improved model accuracy and speed.  Understanding of different indexing/chunking strategies based on the data and goal of the system.  Understanding of semantic search and vector databases and how they differ from classic retrieval methods and databases.

• You have a track record of working through the full lifecycle of building testing deploying and scaling LLM architectures.

• Experience in fine-tuning LLMs to specific needs with a focus on training data optimization and bias mitigation.

• Experience coding and shipping products while working with cross-functional teams.

• Expert at identifying and documenting trade-offs made during the development process.

• Strong experience building with cloud infrastructure technologies.

• Preferred but not required to have experience with LLM-assisted code generation.

Things You’ll Be Doing

• You recognize that AI-based applications can only improve with data-driven feedback loops which will be core to any system you develop. These loops capture/instrument user data synthesize the user's core use cases and then implement/test strategies with the LLM to improve performance.

• Integrating LLMs into software products at Zapier setting up necessary infrastructure ensuring its performance scalability and reliability.

• Exploring new and divergent LLM systems that will create a measurable impact in improvement over our base implementations.

• Design and implement prompting for LLMs that help our users create new automations making the process more intuitive and efficient.

• Design and develop comprehensive evaluation suites to assess model performance and reliability

• Monitor the performance and health of AI systems detecting and addressing issues such as system failures and performance degradation.

• Dependent on experience implementing LLM-assisted retrieval algorithms to provide answers over large datasets.

• Collaborate with Data and with cross-functional teams to refine and deploy LLM-based features.

How to Apply

At Zapier we believe that diverse perspectives and experiences make us better which is why we have a non-standard application process designed to promote inclusion and equity. We're looking for the best fit for each of our roles regardless of the type of education or companies in your background so we encourage you to apply even if your skills and experiences don’t exactly match the job description. All we ask is that you answer a few in-depth questions in our application that would typically be asked at the start of an interview process. This helps speed things up by letting us get to know you and your skillset a bit better right out of the gate. Please be sure to answer each question; the resume and CV fields are optional.

After you apply you are going to hear back from us—even if we don’t see an immediate fit with our team. In fact throughout the process we strive to never go more than seven days without letting you know the status of your application. We know we’ll make mistakes from time to time so if you ever have questions about where you stand or about the process just ask your recruiter!

Zapier is an equal-opportunity employer and we're excited to work with talented and empathetic people of all identities. Zapier does not discriminate based on someone's identity in any aspect of hiring or employment as required by law and in line with our commitment to Diversity Inclusion Belonging and Equity. Our code of conduct provides a beacon for the kind of company we strive to be and we celebrate our differences because those differences are what allow us to make a product that serves a global user base. Zapier will consider all qualified applicants including those with criminal histories consistent with applicable laws.

Zapier is committed to inclusion. As part of this commitment Zapier welcomes applications from individuals with disabilities and will work to provide reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodations are needed to participate in the job application or interview process please contact [email protected] .

Application Deadline:

The anticipated application window is 30 days from the date job is posted unless the number of applicants requires it to close sooner or later or if the position is filled.

Even though we’re an all-remote company we still need to be thoughtful about where we have Zapiens working. Check out this resource for a list of countries where we currently cannot have Zapiens permanently working.