About the team
The Agentic AI team at Zillow is at the forefront of transforming the real estate industry by helping millions of people use AI assistants to find their next home. Within this organization, the Agentic Solutions team develops AI-powered experiences that help people navigate their real estate journey, understand their options, make informed decisions and take action. Our applied scientists work closely with engineering, product and design to turn advances in AI into reliable features that deliver measurable customer value. Our work sits at the intersection of large language models and traditional machine learning, such as ranking and personalization, and we are a small team where every scientist has real ownership and influence over what we build.
About the role
As a Senior Applied Scientist on the Agentic AI team, you will tackle complex, ambiguous problems from scientific framing and modeling through evaluation, experimentation and production delivery, and help shape which problems we solve and how we measure success.
You will:
Own ambiguous applied-science problems end to end, from identifying an opportunity and forming a hypothesis through data analysis, modeling, experimentation and production iteration
Develop and compare machine learning and LLM-based approaches to improve customer experiences, establishing useful baselines, adapting relevant research and adding complexity when the evidence supports it
Build reliable datasets and offline evaluations, and design online experiments that connect model quality to meaningful customer and business outcomes
Partner with engineering, product, design and science teams to turn promising methods into reliable production capabilities, balancing quality, safety, latency and cost
Write maintainable Python and SQL, contribute production-ready scientific components, and share methods, findings and technical decisions with other scientists and engineers
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, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Washington state, and Washington DC the standard base pay range for this role is $164,400.00 - $262,600.00 annually. This base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations.
In Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia the standard base pay range for this role is $156,200.00 - $249,400.00 annually. The base pay range is specific to these locations 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. Employees in this role will not be paid below the salary threshold for exempt employees in the state where they reside.
Who you are
You are a hands-on applied scientist who enjoys turning new ideas into shipped features. You are curious, you learn new domains quickly, and you change direction when the results tell you to.
Must-haves
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Electrical Engineering or a related quantitative field and 8+ years applying machine learning or advanced statistical modeling in industry, including production delivery; or an equivalent combination of education and experience
Strong applied machine learning and statistical foundations, demonstrated through model development, evaluation and production impact
Depth in a relevant area such as recommendations, ranking, search, personalization or conversational AI, with evidence of independently solving ambiguous problems and learning new domains
Experience…