Senior/Staff Software Engineer - ML/AI Applications
TECHNICAL STACK · 2 TAGS
OVERVIEW
As a Technical Lead on Zoox's internal agentic platform, you will own end-to-end integration of a tool-centric agent runtime with external and internal agent clients, line of business backends, scheduled and interactive agent workloads, and cloud operations (Kubernetes, observability, secrets management). You will translate architecture and security intent into stable tool contracts, testable integration milestones, and repeatable releases, and you will be the primary engineer when issues sit at the boundary between product surfaces, platform services, and upstream systems.
This role is platform and service integration for an agentic framework that mediates tools (discovery, invocation, policy, and telemetry). Success is measured by reliable tool call paths over HTTP, correct authentication and scoping, environment parity from dev through production, and clear ownership across partner engineering, security, and infrastructure teams.
IN THIS ROLE, YOU WILL
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Own and lead integration strategy and execution across hosted services, shared libraries, standardized tool protocols (e.g., JSON-RPC over HTTP), REST APIs, and diverse callers (vendor agents, consoles, automation workers).
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Drive cross-functional delivery with backend API teams, partner agent owners, security, SRE/platform, and program management, ensuring formal sign-off where required.
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Debug and root-cause complex failures using structured logs, distributed traces, metrics, and gateway/session-token behavior, documenting durable mitigations and runbooks.
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Define and review all integration artifacts (contracts, allowlists, registry config, environment matrices, and interface assumptions) that upstream and downstream teams implement against.
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Contribute to release gating by ensuring container image promotion, configuration/secrets posture, smoke path execution for high-traffic flows, and disciplined branching/tagging for production intent
QUALIFICATIONS
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BS or MS in Computer Science or a related field with 7+ years of software engineering experience, strong in integration, platform, or backend roles.
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Strong Python (production services, async I/O, automated testing) and comfort in a large monorepo with CI-driven delivery.
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Deep experience with HTTP integration (REST/JSON-RPC, TLS, debugging under load) and shipping services on Kubernetes (deployments, health checks, troubleshooting).
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Auth integration experience: bearer tokens, JWT validation, OAuth2/OIDC or enterprise SSO concepts, and least-privilege scoping
BONUS QUALIFICATIONS
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Exposure to Model Context Protocol (MCP) or similar agent tool-calling and orchestration models used in industry or internal platforms.
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Observability-led integration habits: metrics, traces, structured logging, and basic SLO or dashboard thinking for integration health.
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Background in security-sensitive integrations (data minimization, external partner access, review cycles with security or compliance).
REQUIREMENTS
A Final Note
You do not need to match every listed expectation to apply for this position. Here at Zoox, we know that diverse perspectives foster the innovation we need to be successful, and we are committed to building a team that encompasses a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and skills.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
- How much does the Senior/Staff Software Engineer - ML/AI Applications at Zoox pay?
- The posting lists a range of $234K–$294K per year. Ranges reflect what Zoox publicly declared on the source posting.
- Where is this Senior/Staff Software Engineer - ML/AI Applications role based?
- The role is based in Foster City, CA.
- What experience does Zoox expect for this role?
- The posting is tagged as a lead-level role, typically 7+ years of experience. Check the requirements section for specifics.
- Where is Zoox headquartered?
- Zoox is headquartered in Foster City, USA.
- How was this posting sourced?
- This role was pulled directly from Zoox's Lever careers site. Apply links open in the employer's own ATS — no reposts or aggregator middleware.
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