Senior Backend Engineer, Zapier
MCP
$174.2-261.2k
CA$174.2K – CA$261.2K + Offers Equity + Offers Bonus
More information about location
Workflow automation service
Be an early applicant
Workflow automation service
501-1000 employees
Be an early applicant
$174.2-261.2k
CA$174.2K – CA$261.2K + Offers Equity + Offers Bonus
More information about location
501-1000 employees
Company mission
Zapier's mission is to Make Automation Work for Everyone!
Role
Who you are
- If you’re excited about working on foundational systems, love thinking in protocols and architecture, and want to help define how AI agents get work done — this is your role
- You’re a seasoned backend builder. You have 6+ years of experience designing, developing and maintaining complex production systems
- You’re comfortable writing backend services (Python or Node.js ideal), and you’re not afraid to go deep into API design, database modeling, or CI/CD pipelines
- You understand and leverage AI tooling. You know how to use AI tools to accelerate your own development process (e.g. GitHub Copilot, Cursor), and you also get excited about building systems that enable others to use AI effectively
- You’ve worked with or implemented components like model context protocol or agent frameworks
- You thrive on platform thinking. You’ve built or contributed to platform products before, with a focus on extensibility, documentation, and robust foundations. You can make the complex simple for our customers
- You lead with customer empathy and curiosity. You continuously seek context, ask great questions, and stay oriented to the bigger picture to meet the needs of customers to help them solve problems that matter to them
- You bias toward action, especially when next steps aren’t obvious. You create structure, clarity, and momentum for the team surrounding your projects. You’re pragmatic and know when to ship fast and iterate - and when to sweat the details
- You demonstrate an ownership mindset. You take initiative without needing top-down direction, but you’re also an effective communicator who can bring others with you
- You have sound judgment, and balance user needs, technical constraints, and product goals in your decisions
- You’re a self-starter who is comfortable with ambiguity. You can turn loosely defined problems into concrete action, you follow through on commitments, and you surface blockers early to recruit help defining solutions
What the job involves
- We’re hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to help design and scale the systems that enable this vision. You’ll own APIs, build platform primitives, and work closely with cross-functional partners to define how agents access the real world through Zapier
- Design, implement, and evolve core APIs that enable agents to take meaningful actions across Zapier’s integration ecosystem
- Build systems that support scalable orchestration, robust logging, and high-availability execution
- Influence and collaborate on the core performance for MCP focusing on memory, context windows, token usage, and reasoning steps
- Integrate with Zapier’s existing execution infrastructure and help build the interfaces between LLM clients and Zapier
- Partner closely with Product, Design, Platform, and Sales teams to ensure the protocol serves both external and internal needs
- Drive design decisions that prioritize scalability, performance, security, and clarity for developers and AI systems alike
- MCP is one of the most strategically important initiatives at Zapier. It’s foundational to our AI roadmap and plays a central role in how we show up in the broader AI ecosystem
- This is an opportunity to:
- Define how AI agents interact with third-party systems through Zapier
- Shape a new protocol that impacts both internal platform teams and external developers
- Work on high-trust, cross-functional projects with visibility at the executive level
- Influence long-term architecture for Zapier’s most ambitious product experiences
- Be part of a fast-moving, experimental team that values curiosity, clarity, and velocity
Our take
Even before remote working became the "in thing", freelancers, small business owners, and large organisations have found themselves needing more and more software platforms to serve their operational needs. As people used more software services, Zapier founders saw the need to connect the actions between these software and save everyone some time.
Zapier is the largest integration and automation tool for businesses. Since its founding, Zapier has grown its suite of automation offerings across almost every mainstream software service. The company is one of the most successful to come out of Y Combinator and has also been a pioneer of remote working.
Zapier has so far been able to capitalise heavily on its advantage as one of the first entrants and has had very little actual competition. Software services aren't going anywhere anytime soon, and organisations are only going to need more of them. This puts Zapier in a strong position for growth, but also opens up room for bolder companies to get in on the action. Companies like Airtable and Integromat are already preying on more niche segments of Zapier's market share.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
38% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (2 rounds)
Oct 2012
$1.3m
SEED
Sep 2012
$0.2m
SEED
Total funding: $1.5m
Company benefits
- Work from anywhere
- Bonus program
- Unlimited vacation policy
- Great healthcare + dental + vision coverage*
- Retirement plan with company match*
- Stock options for every Zapien**
- 2 annual company retreats to awesome places
- 14 weeks paid leave for new parents
- Home office setup stipend
- Professional development allowance
Additional info
- As a fully remote company with 800+ team members across 40+ states, 38 countries, and 18+ timezones, we’ve adopted a culture of asynchronous work. This work style allows teams to collaborate effectively across locations, time zones, skills, and each individual’s energy levels, and empowers employees to work in a setting that fits their needs. In practice, we live on Slack, with most conversations in public channels. It mimics the open-office feel and allows everyone to search the chat logs if they need to find something that happened when they weren’t around
Leadership
Wade Foster
(Co-Founder & CEO)Prior to co-founding Zapier, wasEmail Marketing Manager with Veterans United Home Loans, and Customer Development Lead at The Idea Works.
Bryan Helmig
(Co-Founder & CTO)Was previously Product Dev/Manager at Veterans United Home Loans.
Mike Knoop
(Co-Founder)Was CPO and Head of Labs at Zapier before becoming President. Previously was a Graduate Research at the University of Missouri.
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