Principal Applied Scientist, Agentic AI

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in California, +16 more states.

📋 Description

• Formulate and implement the comprehensive applied science strategy for advanced reasoning and long-duration agent systems.

• Strike a balance between innovation, customer value, reliability, safety, and business objectives.

• Enhance agent capabilities by leveraging agent architecture, harness design, context and memory engineering, test-time scaling, post-training, evaluation, and data flywheel methodologies.

• Create robust evaluation frameworks for agentic systems, encompassing task- and trajectory-level assessment, long-horizon benchmarks, controlled experiments, ablation studies, and online measurements.

• Engage senior and executive stakeholders by providing scientific insights, technical trade-offs, risk assessments, and recommendations.

• Remain at the cutting edge of research in agentic AI and foundational models.

• Showcase Zillow's contributions through publications, conference presentations, open-source initiatives, patents, and external technical collaborations.

• Collaborate with applied scientists, machine learning engineers, software engineers, product leaders, and senior stakeholders to define the scientific roadmap and product strategy.

⛳️ Requirements

• PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related discipline, or equivalent experience demonstrating comparable technical proficiency and impact.

• Over 8 years of industry experience in constructing and deploying large-scale, impactful AI systems.

• Profound expertise in large language models and agentic AI.

• Proven ability to translate research concepts into dependable customer-facing systems.

• Experience in developing AI agents with multi-step reasoning, extended execution, and proactive behaviors.

• Significant hands-on experience with agent architecture, harness design, context and memory engineering, test-time scaling, and post-training approaches.

• Extensive experience in creating rigorous evaluation frameworks for intricate AI systems, including benchmark design, experimentation, reliability assessment, and comprehensive impact measurement.

• Demonstrated success in leading complex, ambiguous, cross-functional projects from scientific conceptualization and prototyping to production deployment, monitoring, and measurable outcomes for customers or the business.

• Proven technical leadership, mentorship, and capacity to influence scientific, engineering, product, and executive audiences.

• Evidence of scientific leadership through high-impact production systems, patents, publications, open-source contributions, conference presentations, or equivalent industry achievements.

🏝️ Benefits

• Equity awards based on factors such as experience, performance, and location.

• Flexible distributed work model through Zillow’s Cloud HQ.

• An inclusive, innovative, and engaging organizational culture.

• Opportunities for employee growth and development.

• Equal employment opportunities and accommodations for individuals with disabilities or special needs.