Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Agentic AI

About the teamThe Agentic AI team at Zillow is at the forefront of transforming the
real estate industry by helping millions of people use advanced AI
technologies to find their next home. We aim to redefine the home
shopping and transaction experience by providing a proactive, always-
on assistant with cutting-edge speech recognition, natural language
understanding, and dynamic dialogue orchestration. By embedding
domain knowledge and specialized expertise in these assistants, we
empower home buyers and real estate professionals to gain efficiency
while maintaining Zillow's competitive edge. This lean, customer
centric team consists of scientists and engineers working together to
deliver a delightful customer experience. We strongly believe in
accountability, collaboration, and transparency.

About the role

Zillow is looking for a Principal Machine Learning Engineer on the Agentic AI team to develop innovative multimodal Agentic AI technologies. They will be hands-on in prototyping ideas, collaborating with product partners, and evaluating, and deploying models to Zillow's highly scalable infrastructure platforms. They’ll be developing perception and language understanding, deep reasoning, and reinforcement learning to handle AI agent decision-making.

As a Principal Machine Learning Engineer on this team, you will:

• Leverage frameworks like AgengSDK, and LangChain/LangGraph to design, prototype, and develop multi-agent systems that are capable of highly autonomous and context-aware interactions

• Leverage sophisticated GenAI models including reasoning models, real-time voice API, etc, to build prototypes and later on convert them into product-level skills to deploy to users

• Have the mentality of “build, learn, and pivot”, and maintain the bar of shipping into production

• Mentor and guide engineers in using the technologies for agentic AI solutions and cultivate a culture of innovation and responsible AI usage

• Distill complex research findings and system designs into clear, actionable insights for diverse audiences which include executives, product teams, and external partners

• Remain on the cutting edge of agentic AI, LLM advancements, and emerging paradigms, driving product innovation

• Serve as the focal point for high-priority applied science projects by driving alignment on deliverables, timelines, and resource allocation

• Continuously refine processes for experimentation, A/B testing, and production rollouts to balance innovation with reliability and responsible deployment

This role has been categorized as a Remote position. “Remote” employees do not have a permanent corporate office workplace and, instead, work from a physical location of their choice, which must be identified to the Company. U.S. employees may live in any of the 50 United States, with limited exceptions.

In California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Washington state, and Washington DC the standard base pay range for this role is $199,000.00 - $318,000.00 Annually. This base pay range is specific to California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Washington state, and Washington DC and may not be applicable to other locations.

In addition to a competitive base salary this position is also eligible for equity awards based on factors such as experience, performance and location. Actual amounts will vary depending on experience, performance and location.

Who you are

You are a roll-up-the-sleeves and get-it-done engineer who can marry pioneering AI models with large-scale engineering. We are looking for someone who has:

• A master's degree or above

• Experience in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field with emphasis on foundational LLM, agentic AI, reinforcement learning, AI planning, or natural language processing

• 7+ years of hands-on work building high-impact solutions—ideally building agent-based systems, multi-agent collaboration, or similar paradigms

• Experience shipping critical, user-friendly, voice-based conversational systems that perform multi-step reasoning and context rich decision-making

• Knowledge of ASR, TTS technologies, and neural network architectures designed specifically for audio tasks

• Authority in the area of voice-agent, building natural voice-driven conversational bot and agentic skills through real-time API or other open-source voice foundational models

• Understanding of evaluation metrics specific to ASR/TTS as well as multimodal foundational models

• Experience deploying and scaling business-critical AI services capable of handling hundreds of millions of daily interactions with high availability, low latency, and robust fault tolerance

• A track record of publishing high-impact research in top AI/ML venues is a big plus

Get to know us

Zillow is reimagining real estate to make home a reality for more and more people.

As the most-visited real estate website in the United States, Zillow® and its affiliates help movers find and win their home through digital solutions, first class partners, and easier buying, selling, financing and renting experiences. Millions of people visit Zillow Group sites every month to start their home search, and now they can rely on Zillow to help make it easier to move. The work we do helps people get home and no matter what job you're in, you will play a critical role in making home a reality for more and more people.

Our efforts to streamline the real estate transaction are supported by a deep-rooted culture of innovation, our passion to redefine the employee experience, a fundamental commitment to Equity and Belonging, and world-class benefits. These benefits include comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life, and disability coverages as well as parental leave, family benefits, retirement contributions, and paid time off. We’re also setting the standard for work experiences of the future, where our employees are supported in doing their best work and living a flexible, well-balanced life. But don’t just take our word for it. Read recent reviews on Glassdoor and recent recognition from multiple organizations, including: the 100 Best Companies to Work For, Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award, Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Corporate Equity Index, and TIME 100 Most Influential Companies list.

Zillow Group is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment with the best employees. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please contact your recruiter directly.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable state and local law.

Applicants who receive job offers from Zillow Group will be asked to sign a Proprietary Rights Agreement which includes confidentiality, intellectual property assignment, customer and employee non-solicitation, and non-competition provisions. If you are contacted for a role at Zillow Group and wish to review a copy of the Proprietary Rights Agreement prior to receiving an offer, you may request a copy from your Recruiter.