Software Engineer, AI Foundation

Zip is the AI platform for enterprise procurement, designed to facilitate collaboration between humans and AI agents. By streamlining procurement across teams, tools, and suppliers through AI, Zip empowers companies to acquire necessary resources and innovate rapidly. Trusted by leading enterprises such as T-Mobile, OpenAI, AMD, and Mars, Zip has helped save over $8 billion and processed more than $500 billion in spend. The team includes product and procurement leaders from top companies like Apple, Airbnb, Meta, United Health, and NASA. Backed by investors such as Adams Street, Alkeon, BOND, CRV, DST, Tiger Global, and Y Combinator, Zip has raised $371 million with a recent valuation of $2.2 billion. It has been recognized by Forbes Fintech 50, Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies, Inc. Best in Business, and LinkedIn Top Startups.

Introduction

Zip is seeking a Software Engineer for its AI Foundations team. In this role, you will be instrumental in building the core platform that powers all AI-driven products at Zip, focusing on shared infrastructure that enhances the efficiency of engineers and products across the company. This position offers significant technical autonomy to define approaches in a rapidly evolving field.

Responsibilities

• Design and build the core agentic platform for Zip's AI products, including orchestration, memory, retrieval, and document processing infrastructure.
• Deliver platform capabilities end-to-end, from architectural decisions to production, influencing how the broader engineering organization builds AI.
• Collaborate with product teams to understand needs, identify shared patterns, and deliver reusable infrastructure to improve product quality across various AI initiatives (Intake AI, Chatbot, IP Agent, Contract Orchestration, Payments).
• Advance applied AI engineering with LLM orchestration (e.g., LangGraph), RAG pipelines, agentic document parsing, and self-correcting memory systems.
• Develop and enhance evaluation frameworks and observability tools to ensure the reliability of AI systems.
• Convert ambiguous, open-ended problems into well-defined technical solutions without relying on predefined playbooks.

Requirements

• At least 3 years of backend or full-stack software engineering experience in a production environment.
• BS or higher in Computer Science or a related technical field involving coding (e.g., physics or math).
• Strong proficiency in Python; experience with async frameworks and distributed systems is a plus.
• Hands-on experience building or operating LLM-based applications (RAG pipelines, tool use, agents, or evaluation systems).
• Experience with data pipelines, job scheduling (e.g., Airflow), and vector databases or embedding-based search.
• Familiarity with observability tooling: tracing, logging, metrics, and alerting in production AI systems.
• Proven track record of end-to-end problem ownership, prioritizing production functionality as much as shipping features.
• Demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguous, open-ended problems to a conclusion independently.
• A platform-oriented mindset, designing for reusability beyond immediate use cases.
• Exposure to AI-driven automation or strong interest in collaborating with AI/ML teams to develop intelligent workflows.

Nice to Have

• Familiarity with LangChain, LangGraph, or similar agent orchestration frameworks.
• Experience with document parsing or OCR pipelines (PDF, DOCX, XLSX extraction).
• Background in ML platform, developer tooling, or internal platform engineering.
• Prior experience with evaluation frameworks for AI/ML systems.
• Experience in a fast-paced startup environment with broad, cross-functional responsibilities.
• Exposure to procurement, finance, or enterprise SaaS domains.

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
• Paid parental leave
• Fertility stipend
• 401k plan
• Unlimited AI token usage

About Company

Zip is the AI platform for enterprise procurement, designed to facilitate collaboration between humans and AI agents. By streamlining procurement across teams, tools, and suppliers through AI, Zip empowers companies to acquire necessary resources and innovate rapidly. Trusted by leading enterprises such as T-Mobile, OpenAI, AMD, and Mars, Zip has helped save over $8 billion and processed more than $500 billion in spend. The team includes product and procurement leaders from top companies like Apple, Airbnb, Meta, United Health, and NASA. Backed by investors such as Adams Street, Alkeon, BOND, CRV, DST, Tiger Global, and Y Combinator, Zip has raised $371 million with a recent valuation of $2.2 billion. It has been recognized by Forbes Fintech 50, Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies, Inc. Best in Business, and LinkedIn Top Startups.

How to Apply

We encourage all candidates to apply even if their experience does not perfectly match the job description. Zip is committed to building a diverse and inclusive workspace.