# Senior Software Engineer, Developer Platform
**Company:** [Zip](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/zip)
As a Senior Software Engineer on Zip's Developer Platform team, you will design and build scalable infrastructure, tooling, and processes that enable 100s of engineers to ship enterprise-quality software with high velocity. This role combines hands-on technical leadership with architectural guidance, focusing on optimizing development environments, CI/CD pipelines, testing frameworks, and deployment processes while driving adoption of AI-assisted development tools across the organization.
**Role:** Senior Software Engineer
**Seniority:** Senior
**Locations:** San Francisco
**Salary:** 185000–260000 USD
[Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/zip/f003bb4d-8453-44bd-8ae0-2c1ad244a26e)
Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/zip/senior-software-engineer-developer-platform-f003bb4d
---
## Responsibilities

- Design and Implement Scalable Developer Infrastructure: Build and maintain scalable architecture, tooling, and processes that empower Zip's engineering organization. Design innovative frameworks to address unique testing challenges, including low-level systems optimizations for accelerating test execution and large-scale rewrites using AI-assisted codemods.
- Lead AI-Driven Development Tool Adoption: Champion the adoption of AI-driven development tools across the organization, from integrated development environments to intelligent code review systems to automated test generators. Demonstrate tangible productivity improvements and guide engineers in leveraging these tools effectively.
- Optimize Development Velocity and Remove Friction: Systematically diagnose and eliminate bottlenecks throughout the entire development workflow, spanning development environments, testing patterns, continuous integration pipelines, deployment processes, and feature flag conventions. Measure impact and drive continuous improvement.
- Enhance Codebase Health and Quality Standards: Analyze legacy code patterns that require modernization, build comprehensive frameworks and guardrails that guide engineers toward best practices, and lift overall product quality by addressing platform-layer issues that affect multiple services.
- Drive Deploy and Release Process Innovation: Architect and implement a modern deploy and release process enabling daily deployments while maintaining enterprise reliability. Implement advanced deployment strategies including canary deployments, traffic replay testing, and feature bundling for Enterprise customers.
- Provide Technical Leadership and Mentorship: Deliver design and architectural guidance to cross-functional teams, providing mentorship while empowering engineers to autonomously scope and solve difficult technical challenges. Share knowledge through code reviews, technical documentation, and architectural discussions.

## Requirements

### education

- {"name":"Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related Technical Field","description":"BS or higher in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, or equivalent technical discipline. Advanced degree holders are encouraged to apply."}

### technical

- {"name":"CI/CD Pipeline Expertise","description":"Proven experience designing, building, and optimizing continuous integration and continuous deployment pipelines. Strong proficiency with modern CI tools including GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Buildkite, Jenkins, or equivalent platforms."}
- {"name":"Container and Infrastructure Technologies","description":"Deep hands-on experience with containerization technologies such as Docker, container orchestration systems, and infrastructure-as-code practices. Understanding of deployment strategies, environment management, and infrastructure optimization."}
- {"name":"Software Architecture and Systems Design","description":"Demonstrated ability to design scalable systems architecture, evaluate technology tradeoffs, and implement solutions that support hundreds of engineers. Experience with performance optimization, system diagnostics, and debugging complex distributed systems."}
- {"name":"Testing Frameworks and Quality Assurance","description":"Expertise in designing and building testing frameworks, test automation infrastructure, and quality assurance processes. Experience with performance testing, integration testing, and techniques for reducing test execution time without sacrificing coverage."}
- {"name":"Software Development Best Practices","description":"Strong understanding of modern development workflows, code review processes, version control strategies, and developer experience optimization. Knowledge of codemod tools, automated refactoring, and techniques for managing technical debt."}

### experience

- {"name":"4+ Years of Software Engineering Experience","description":"Minimum four years of professional software engineering experience, with demonstrated progression in complexity and scope. Experience shipping production software at scale and understanding full software development lifecycle."}
- {"name":"Infrastructure and DevOps Exposure","description":"Hands-on experience working with CI/CD systems, deployment infrastructure, or developer tooling. Prior experience optimizing build times, test execution, or deployment processes is highly valuable."}
- {"name":"Cross-functional Collaboration","description":"Track record of working effectively with product, infrastructure, and backend teams. Experience communicating technical concepts to diverse audiences and driving adoption of new tools or processes."}
- {"name":"High Ownership and Autonomous Problem Solving","description":"Demonstrated ability to identify problems, take full ownership, and drive solutions independently. Experience diagnosing performance issues, debugging complex systems, and delivering measurable improvements."}

## Skills

### required

- {"name":"Backend or Full-Stack Development","description":"Solid foundation in backend development with experience building production systems. Proficiency in at least one primary programming language and understanding of distributed systems concepts."}
- {"name":"CI/CD Tools and Practices","description":"Hands-on proficiency with GitHub, GitLab, Buildkite, Jenkins, or comparable CI/CD platforms. Understanding of build automation, deployment orchestration, and pipeline-as-code approaches."}
- {"name":"Docker and Container Orchestration","description":"Practical experience with Docker, containerization best practices, and container orchestration concepts. Knowledge of container networking, image optimization, and deployment patterns."}
- {"name":"Debugging and Performance Optimization","description":"Strong diagnostic and debugging skills, including ability to identify performance bottlenecks, trace issues through complex systems, and implement targeted optimizations. Experience with profiling tools and performance metrics."}
- {"name":"Attention to Detail and Ownership Mindset","description":"Meticulous focus on code quality, documentation, and reliability. High standards for craftsmanship and commitment to seeing projects through from conception to successful deployment and monitoring."}

### preferred

- {"name":"AI-Assisted Development Tools","description":"Experience or enthusiasm for emerging AI-powered development tools including code generation, intelligent IDE features, automated testing frameworks, and code review assistance systems."}
- {"name":"Large-Scale Refactoring and Codemod Experience","description":"Previous experience leading or executing large-scale refactoring initiatives, using automated tools like codemods, or modernizing legacy systems across multiple services or repositories."}
- {"name":"Developer Experience and Platform Engineering","description":"Background in developer experience optimization, platform engineering, or internal tools development. Understanding of how tooling and infrastructure decisions impact engineer productivity."}
- {"name":"Deployment Strategies and Feature Flagging","description":"Experience implementing advanced deployment strategies such as canary deployments, blue-green deployments, feature flags, or progressive rollouts. Knowledge of risk mitigation in production deployments."}
- {"name":"Enterprise SaaS Architecture","description":"Understanding of enterprise software requirements including multi-tenancy, compliance, audit trails, and scalability at high volumes. Experience optimizing for enterprise customer needs."}

## Tech stack

### tools

- {"name":"GitHub/GitLab","description":"Version control and repository management systems that serve as the foundation for CI/CD integration and developer workflows."}
- {"name":"Docker/Container Runtime","description":"Essential containerization technology for standardizing build environments, deployment, and infrastructure automation."}
- {"name":"Buildkite/Jenkins","description":"Continuous integration platforms for orchestrating complex build pipelines, testing workflows, and deployment processes."}
- {"name":"Kubernetes","description":"Container orchestration platform for managing scalable infrastructure and automated deployment strategies."}
- {"name":"Grafana/DataDog/New Relic","description":"Observability and monitoring platforms for tracking system health, performance metrics, and identifying optimization opportunities."}

### others

- {"name":"Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform/CloudFormation)","description":"Tools for managing cloud infrastructure declaratively and ensuring reproducible, version-controlled infrastructure changes."}
- {"name":"AI-Assisted Development Tools","description":"Emerging tools and platforms for code generation, automated testing, and intelligent code review capabilities."}
- {"name":"Distributed System Design Patterns","description":"Understanding of patterns like eventual consistency, circuit breakers, and observability for building reliable infrastructure at scale."}
- {"name":"API Design and REST/gRPC","description":"Expertise in designing clean APIs for developer consumption, considering backward compatibility and developer experience."}

### databases

- {"name":"PostgreSQL","description":"Primary relational database choice for infrastructure services, tracking build metadata, and audit logging."}
- {"name":"Redis","description":"Essential for caching, job queues, and real-time data in CI/CD systems and developer platforms."}
- {"name":"Time-Series Databases (e.g., InfluxDB, Prometheus)","description":"Critical for tracking build performance metrics, pipeline analytics, and identifying performance bottlenecks."}

### languages

- {"name":"Python","description":"Common for infrastructure automation, CI/CD scripting, and build system configuration in modern development platforms."}
- {"name":"Golang","description":"Increasingly popular for infrastructure tools, CLI utilities, and high-performance backend services in developer platform teams."}
- {"name":"TypeScript/JavaScript","description":"Essential for frontend tooling, build system plugins, and backend services in modern web-based development platforms."}
- {"name":"Rust","description":"Growing adoption for high-performance infrastructure tools, CLI utilities, and systems that require both safety and speed."}

### frameworks

- {"name":"FastAPI or Django","description":"Python-based frameworks commonly used in infrastructure and developer tooling for building APIs and backend services."}
- {"name":"Express.js or Next.js","description":"Node.js frameworks useful for building developer dashboards, CLI tools, and internal platform UIs."}
- {"name":"Testing Frameworks (pytest, Jest, RSpec)","description":"Essential expertise in testing frameworks to design and build robust testing infrastructure and test automation solutions."}

## Benefits

### benefits

- {"name":"Equity Compensation","description":"Startup equity to align your success with company growth. Meaningful equity packages for senior engineers contribute to long-term wealth building."}
- {"name":"Comprehensive Health Coverage","description":"100% covered health, vision, and dental insurance options. Medical and wellness benefits are fully subsidized to support your healthcare needs."}
- {"name":"On-Site Meals and Nutrition","description":"Catered breakfast, lunch, and dinner daily at the San Francisco office. Eliminates meal planning stress and supports healthy nutrition."}
- {"name":"Flexible Paid Time Off","description":"Flexible PTO policy with no cap, encouraging work-life balance and time for rest and personal pursuits. Trust-based approach to time management."}
- {"name":"Wellness and Fitness Benefits","description":"ClassPass membership providing access to thousands of gyms, studios, and wellness experiences. Support for maintaining physical and mental health."}
- {"name":"Commuter and Remote Work Support","description":"Monthly commuter benefits and home office stipend for remote work setup. Phone and internet reimbursement support flexible work arrangements."}
- {"name":"Hybrid Work Flexibility","description":"Hybrid work model with 5 flexible remote days per quarter, enabling location flexibility while maintaining team collaboration and culture."}
- {"name":"Team Building and Community","description":"Regular team building events and happy hours fostering camaraderie, cross-functional connections, and positive workplace culture."}
- {"name":"Family Benefits","description":"Comprehensive paid parental leave and fertility benefits supporting diverse family planning needs and life circumstances."}
- {"name":"Employee Assistance Program","description":"Employee Assistance Program providing confidential counseling, mental health resources, and personal support services for employees and families."}
- {"name":"AI Development Tools Access","description":"Unlimited AI token usage providing access to cutting-edge AI-assisted development tools for code generation, testing, and productivity enhancement."}

## Compensation

- **max:** 260000
- **min:** 185000
- **currency:** USD
- **stockOptions:** true

## Interview process

### steps

- {"name":"Initial Phone Screening","description":"Recruiter conversation to discuss your background, experience with infrastructure and developer tooling, and alignment with Zip's mission. Typically 30 minutes to understand your career trajectory and motivation."}
- {"name":"Technical Phone Interview","description":"First-round technical conversation with a Senior Engineer covering systems design, CI/CD infrastructure knowledge, and problem-solving approach. Discussion of past projects optimizing developer velocity and infrastructure."}
- {"name":"Architectural Design Interview","description":"Deep dive into designing developer platform solutions, including testing frameworks, deployment pipelines, or performance optimization strategies. Assesses your ability to think about large-scale infrastructure problems."}
- {"name":"Take-Home Project or Pair Programming Session","description":"Practical assessment through either a take-home project related to developer tooling or a collaborative coding session. May involve optimizing a build system, designing a testing framework, or improving CI/CD workflows."}
- {"name":"Infrastructure and Systems Round","description":"Technical interview focused on distributed systems concepts, infrastructure design patterns, observability, and deployment strategies. Evaluates deep technical knowledge relevant to platform engineering."}
- {"name":"Team and Culture Fit Discussion","description":"Conversation with Developer Platform team members to assess collaboration style, communication, and cultural alignment. Discussion of team structure, mentorship approach, and working across the organization."}
- {"name":"Leadership and Impact Round","description":"Conversation with engineering leadership covering your approach to technical decision-making, driving adoption of new tools, and your vision for developer platform improvements. Discusses high-leverage projects and impact."}
- {"name":"Final Executive Discussion","description":"Conversation with a senior engineering leader covering role expectations, growth opportunities, and long-term career trajectory at Zip. Discussion of company vision and engineering culture."}

## Full description
# **About Zip**

Zip is the AI platform for enterprise procurement — built for humans and agents working together. By orchestrating procurement across teams, tools, and suppliers with the help of AI agents, companies can secure the resources they need to innovate faster than ever before.  
  
The world’s most influential enterprises trust Zip, including T-Mobile, OpenAI, AMD, Mars, Dollar Tree, and more. Together they’ve saved over $8 billion and processed over $500 billion in spend. Zip’s team includes product leaders from Apple, Airbnb, and Meta, as well as former procurement leaders from United Health, Sanofi, MGM Resorts, Discover, and NASA.  
  
Backed by Adams Street, Alkeon, BOND, CRV, DST, Tiger Global, and Y Combinator, Zip has raised $371 million, most recently at a $2.2 billion valuation and has been recognized by Forbes Fintech 50, Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies, Inc. Best in Business, and LinkedIn Top Startups.

## **Your Role**

As a Senior Software Engineer on the Developer Platform team, you will be responsible for designing and building scalable architecture, tooling and processes that enable Zip’s engineers to ship enterprise-quality software with high velocity. You will play a technical leadership role by providing design and architectural guidance to accelerate software development at Zip using techniques ranging from low-level systems optimizations (for speeding up tests), to large-scale rewrites using AI-assisted codemods.

You will ship features that will be immediately used by your coworkers who will feel the impact of your work first-hand and share feedback instantly. On this team, we operate from a position of high leverage, and the impact of every small improvement gets multiplied across the 100s of engineers we support. While we are an experienced team that can provide constant guidance and mentorship, we value engineers who can autonomously scope and solve difficult technical challenges.

## **You Will**

* Lead initiatives to ensure that new features are performant and reliable, creating innovative frameworks to address our unique testing challenges.
* Accelerate software development at Zip by driving adoption of AI-driven tools, from IDEs to code reviews to test generators.
* Drive velocity and productivity by diagnosing and removing friction in every step, from development environments, to testing patterns, to CI pipelines, to deployment processes, to feature flag conventions.
* Lift product quality and boost the health of our codebase by analyzing legacy patterns that need to be sunset, and building new frameworks and guardrails to nudge engineers toward better practices.
* Optimize the customer experience across the product by systematically improving our frameworks, removing and preventing issues at the platform layer.
* Drive the development of a new deploy and release process, enabling daily deployments while safeguarding customers from bugs and incidents through canaries, traffic replay, and bundling feature releases for Enterprise customers

## **Your Qualifications**

* 4+ years of software engineering experience.
* BS or higher, in Computer Science or related technical field (_e.g._ physics or math).
* Experience with modern CI tools such as GitHub, GitLab, Buildkite, Jenkins, and Docker.
* Attention to detail with a strong ownership mindset.
* Ability to diagnose obstacles, debug friction, and drive velocity.

The salary range for this role is $185,000 - $260,000\. The salary for this position is determined based on a variety of job-related factors that may include location, relevant experience, education, or particular skills and expertise.

## **Perks & Benefits**

At Zip, we’re committed to providing our employees with everything they need to do their best work.

* 📈 Start-up equity
* 🦷 100% health, vision & dental coverage options
* 🍽️ Catered breakfast, lunch, & dinner
* 🌴 Flexible PTO
* 🏋️‍♀️ ClassPass membership
* 🚍 Monthly commuter benefit
* 🚠 Team building events & happy hours
* 💻 Home office stipend
* 🛜 Phone/internet reimbursement
* 🏠 Hybrid model + 5 flexible remote days per quarter
* 🍼 Paid parental leave
* 🐣 Fertility benefits
* 🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
* 🤖 Unlimited AI token usage

_We're looking to hire Zipsters and that means hiring people who take ownership, communicate openly, have an underdog mindset, and are excited to increase the pace of innovation for every business in the world. We encourage all candidates to apply even if your experience doesn't exactly match up to our job description. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workspace where everyone (regardless of age, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and more) feels like they belong. We look forward to hearing from you!_