Staff Software Engineer
Zeta GlobalBase Salary
$160k - $180k/yr
Responsibilities
- Identify systemic engineering challenges across platforms and drive their resolution by shaping the technical backlog and near-term architecture.
- Propose and validate technical approaches for scale, performance, security, and cross-team dependency challenges.
- Lead architectural decisions for complex, ambiguous, or high-risk initiatives.
- Write code, review pull requests, debug production issues, and optimize system performance.
- Work hands-on with AWS infrastructure, Kubernetes workloads, and JVM-based services.
- Participate in the on-call rotation as a second-level escalation point and help coordinate major incident resolution.
- Conduct post-incident reviews and champion observability, reliability, deployment practices, and operational excellence.
- Partner with engineering teams and managers on complex projects and document architectural decisions.
- Mentor engineers through reviews, pairing, and direct feedback.
- Collaborate with customers and product teams to ensure technical decisions support user needs and product priorities.
- Incorporate relevant AI/ML tooling and capabilities into technical strategy and platform development.
Requirements
- Deep expertise in AWS and cloud-native architecture, including building reliable and scalable systems at high traffic volumes.
- Strong JVM fundamentals, primarily Java and Kotlin, with the ability to work across languages as needed.
- Hands-on experience deploying, operating, and troubleshooting Kubernetes workloads in production.
- Experience designing and operating distributed systems, including fault tolerance, consistency tradeoffs, service coordination, and failure modes at scale.
- Experience working with large databases, including query optimization, schema design, operational concerns, and storage tradeoffs.
- Practical AI/ML engineering experience, such as integrating LLM capabilities, building pipelines, or evaluating AI use cases.
- Track record of delivering large, complex initiatives in ambiguous environments from scoping through launch.
- Strong debugging and root-cause analysis skills, sound technical judgment, and comfort working without a playbook or in legacy codebases.
- Firm requirement for fluency with AI-driven development tools such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Codex, or similar, including prompt discipline, output validation, and security practices.
- Ability to map existing architectures, identify bottlenecks and opportunities, and create actionable proposals that improve team velocity.
- Experience with PHP or Python is a plus.
- Familiarity with high-volume messaging infrastructure or email and marketing technology is welcome but not required.
- Knowledge of Databricks and data engineering practices such as pipelines, lakehouses, and batch or streaming processing is a bonus.
Benefits
- Remote-first role for engineers across the US.
- Unlimited PTO.
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage.
- Employee equity and stock purchase plan.
- Employee discounts, virtual wellness classes, and pet insurance.
About Zeta Global
At Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA), we help enterprise brands and agencies Achieve the Impossible™ with superintelligent marketing. Powered by proprietary AI and trillions of real-time signals, the Zeta Marketing Platform (ZMP) brings martech and adtech together – unifying identity, intelligence, and activation in one unified place. We enable marketers to deliver personalized experiences that drive measurable growth in the next era of marketing. At the center of this evolution is Athena by Zeta, our superintelligent conversational agent built for predictable, profitable growth. Seamlessly integrated into the ZMP, Athena helps marketers understand performance, identify opportunities, and take action in real time—surfacing insights on spend, audiences, and campaigns, recommending next best moves, and even launching and optimizing campaigns on their behalf. Behind our platform is a global team of 3,000+ employees driven by innovation, collaboration, and a shared focus on customer success. Founded in 2007 by David A. Steinberg and John Sculley, Zeta is headquartered in New York City. Learn more at www.zetaglobal.com