Senior Applied Artificial Intelligence Engineer, Zapier

• 6+ years of professional experience in software engineering, with at least 2 years focused on AI/ML systems or advanced backend systems
• Deep understanding of LLMs, including advanced prompting techniques, fine-tuning for domain-specific applications, and knowledge of agent architecture
• Experience designing and optimizing RAG systems (e.g., semantic search, vector databases, indexing, and chunking strategies)
• Expertise in handling LLM limitations, including hallucination mitigation, bias control, and enhancing model controllability
• Strong understanding of graph-based and relational database models to represent complex relationships and dependencies
• Proven experience developing tools for benchmarking and monitoring AI performance, tying improvements directly to customer value
• Experience creating systems that capture and synthesize user interactions to refine AI models dynamically
• Proficiency in API design and lifecycle management, including versioning and dependency mapping
• You thrive in the intersection of AI and practical user impact. You love taking cutting-edge AI concepts and turning them into usable, meaningful features that solve real-world problems for customers. Our work isn’t theoretical—we aim for direct impact
• You’re excited by the challenge of solving ambiguity. Building AI Assist for Canvas isn’t straightforward; it involves pushing the boundaries of automation and generative AI to create flexible solutions that work across diverse customer use cases
• You take ownership and find leverage in your work. You know how to turn complex, manual processes into automated systems. You don’t just fix problems—you build tools and abstractions to prevent them in the first place
• You balance technical depth with product thinking. You can design a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipeline just as easily as you can explain why it’s valuable to customers. You’ll work in tandem with designers and product managers to build the best solutions possible
• You have an ownership mentality. You take initiative to see your projects through. While you’ll have a collaborative team to support you, you enjoy being in the driver’s seat of complex systems and features
• You love the challenge of scaling AI systems. Whether it’s improving the relevance of RAG systems, fine-tuning LLMs, or creating monitoring frameworks, you’re driven to make AI tools work better, faster, and more reliably

Desirable

• We’re looking for a Senior Engineer, Applied AI to join the Canvas team
• Canvas is Zapier’s platform for visually designing, building, and automating business workflows, and AI Assist is its cutting-edge initiative that leverages AI to recommend optimizations, dynamically generate workflows, and simplify automation across systems
• By combining intuitive diagramming tools with AI-powered automation, Canvas helps users seamlessly build complex workflows using Zapier’s extensive suite of products
• AI Assist enhances this experience by making intelligent recommendations and automating multi-product integrations
• If you’re excited about applying advanced AI technologies to customer-facing solutions and love simplifying complex workflows, this role is for you!
• Advance AI Assist Capabilities: Build and optimize systems that leverage AI to dynamically generate multi-product workflows, allowing users to create complex automations with minimal effort
• Develop and Optimize RAG Systems: Design and enhance retrieval-augmented generation pipelines to ensure AI models deliver accurate, relevant, and actionable responses
• Collaborate with Product and Design Teams: Work closely with product managers, UX designers, and AI/ML specialists to deliver seamless AI-powered automation features that meet user needs
• Deliver an API-First Vision: Architect and implement scalable APIs to support AI Assist and other Canvas functionalities, ensuring they’re reliable, secure, and optimized for performance
• Benchmark and Monitor AI Models: Develop tools and frameworks to evaluate AI performance, ensuring continuous improvement and alignment with user needs
• Capture and Use User Feedback: Create systems to gather user interaction data, enabling iterative refinement of AI models and features
• Collaborate Across Teams: Partner with other engineering teams, the data team, and the staff engineering team to align on goals, share insights, and advocate for system-wide improvements
• You’ll also have the opportunity to specialize in key areas of the Canvas AI initiative

• Deadline to Apply: February 28, 2025 at 5:00 AM UTC
• 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
• 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