Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Zendesk in New South Wales, AU

Senior Machine Learning Engineer Location: Remote, Victoria, Australia Job Description The Mission The enterprise software landscape is fracturing. We are transitioning from "Systems of Record" to "Systems of Action." Zendesk is leading this shift with the Resolution Platform, aiming to be the first CX company to secure $1B in AI-driven revenue. To achieve this, we must solve the "Orchestration Trap." We are not just building features; we are building the high-performance runtime that allows fleets of AI Agents to Perceive, Reason, and Act. The Opportunity You will be a key architect in the "Picks and Shovels" team. You will build the Digital Nervous System that allows probabilistic LLMs to function as reliable, deterministic employees. This is a role for a robust backend engineer who understands that "Agentic AI" is fundamentally a distributed systems challenge. What You Will Architect Durable Agent Runtime: You will leverage agentic ai frameworks to build "ReAct" type (or similar) loops that are resilient to failure. You will solve problems around long-running workflows, distributed state management, and async task execution. The Integration Fabric (MCP): You will help drive our adoption of the Model Context Protocol (MCP). You will build the "MCP Servers" and "Clients" that allow our agents to dynamically discover tools and negotiate capabilities with external systems, laying the groundwork for Agent-to-Agent (A2A) collaboration. Context & Memory Engineering: Infinite context windows are a myth. You will build the "Memory Manager" for our agents, optimizing RAG pipelines, vector storage, and eviction policies to maximize reasoning fidelity while minimizing token costs. The Trust Layer: Enterprise autonomy requires governance. You will build the "Guardrails" and validation layers (Pydantic/Zod) that enforce strict schemas on LLM outputs, ensuring that our agents operate within safe, deterministic bounds. Who You Are Systems Thinker: You have 5+ years of backend experience (Java, Go, or Python). You understand that "Reliability" in an AI system isn't just about uptime; it's about Self-Correction and Recovery. Architectural Depth: You are comfortable designing Event-Driven Architectures (Kafka) and understand the nuances of managing distributed state in a non-deterministic environment. Protocol Aware: You are excited by open standards like MCP and understand the complexity of API design, capability negotiation, and security/sandboxing for tool execution. Business Aligned: You understand that we are optimizing for "Automated Resolution." You care about latency, cost-per-token, and the unit economics of the systems you build. Tech Stack Languages: Python (AI Logic), Go/Java (Platform Services). Orchestration: AWS Step Functions. Data: Vector DBs (Pinecone/Weaviate), Postgres, Kafka. Protocols: MCP (Model Context Protocol), gRPC, GraphQL. Why Join? We are one of the few companies with the scale (100k+ customers) and the data density to actually solve Agentic AI. You won't be building "demos." You will be architecting the platform that defines how the world interacts with customer service for the next decade. The intelligent heart of customer experience Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love. Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law. Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here. Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request. Additional Locations: Remote, New South Wales, Australia