Sr. Applied AI Engineer, Canvas

Overview

We’re looking for a Senior Engineer, Applied AI to join the Canvas team. Canvas is Zapier’s platform for visually designing, building, and automating business workflows, and AI Assist is its cutting-edge initiative that leverages AI to recommend optimizations, dynamically generate workflows, and simplify automation across systems.

By combining intuitive diagramming tools with AI-powered automation, Canvas helps users seamlessly build complex workflows using Zapier’s extensive suite of products. AI Assist enhances this experience by making intelligent recommendations and automating multi-product integrations.

If you’re excited about applying advanced AI technologies to customer-facing solutions and love simplifying complex workflows, this role is for you!

• Our Commitment to Applicants
• Culture and Values at Zapier
• Zapier Guide to Remote Work
• Zapier Code of Conduct
• Diversity and Inclusivity at Zapier

 

About You

Required Technical Skills/Experience:

• 6+ years of professional experience in software engineering, with at least 2 years focused on AI/ML systems or advanced backend systems.
• Deep understanding of LLMs, including advanced prompting techniques, fine-tuning for domain-specific applications, and knowledge of agent architecture.
• Experience designing and optimizing RAG systems (e.g., semantic search, vector databases, indexing, and chunking strategies).
• Expertise in handling LLM limitations, including hallucination mitigation, bias control, and enhancing model controllability.
• Strong understanding of graph-based and relational database models to represent complex relationships and dependencies.
• Proven experience developing tools for benchmarking and monitoring AI performance, tying improvements directly to customer value.
• Experience creating systems that capture and synthesize user interactions to refine AI models dynamically.
• Proficiency in API design and lifecycle management, including versioning and dependency mapping.

Nice-to-Have Technical Skills/Experience:

• Hands-on experience with Fastify or similar frameworks.

 

Why You Should or Shouldn’t Apply

AI engineers come in many flavors, and this role requires a specific mix of skills and mindset. Here’s what you should consider when deciding if this role fits what you’re looking for:

You should apply if:

• You thrive in the intersection of AI and practical user impact. You love taking cutting-edge AI concepts and turning them into usable, meaningful features that solve real-world problems for customers. Our work isn’t theoretical—we aim for direct impact.
• You’re excited by the challenge of solving ambiguity. Building AI Assist for Canvas isn’t straightforward; it involves pushing the boundaries of automation and generative AI to create flexible solutions that work across diverse customer use cases.
• You take ownership and find leverage in your work. You know how to turn complex, manual processes into automated systems. You don’t just fix problems—you build tools and abstractions to prevent them in the first place.
• You balance technical depth with product thinking. You can design a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipeline just as easily as you can explain why it’s valuable to customers. You’ll work in tandem with designers and product managers to build the best solutions possible.
• You have an ownership mentality. You take initiative to see your projects through. While you’ll have a collaborative team to support you, you enjoy being in the driver’s seat of complex systems and features.
• You love the challenge of scaling AI systems. Whether it’s improving the relevance of RAG systems, fine-tuning LLMs, or creating monitoring frameworks, you’re driven to make AI tools work better, faster, and more reliably.

You shouldn’t apply if:

• You’re looking for well-defined structures and processes. We’re a fast-paced, collaborative environment where you’ll need to lead your own work. If you prefer rigid sprint planning and highly defined project management, this role might not be for you.
• You prefer to specialize in only one part of the stack. This role will require touching everything from AI systems and APIs to UX interactions and customer data pipelines. If you’re looking to stick with just backend, frontend, or AI, this might not be the right fit.
• You want purely heads-down technical work. While technical expertise is critical, success in this role requires strong communication and collaboration with product, design, and other teams.
• You haven’t worked with advanced AI tools or methodologies. This is a senior role that requires significant experience with LLMs, RAG systems, and building AI-powered products. If this isn’t your background, you might want to look at other roles we offer.
• You don’t enjoy working with ambiguity. A lot of what we’re doing at the intersection of AI and workflow automation hasn’t been done before. If you’re not comfortable making decisions without a clear blueprint, this might not be the best fit.
• You prefer mentorship-heavy roles. While we value collaboration, our team members are expected to be independent and experienced. You won’t find extensive junior mentorship opportunities in this role.

 

Things You’ll Do

At Zapier you’ll likely get experience on many different projects across the organization. That said, here are some things you’ll probably do:

• Advance AI Assist Capabilities: Build and optimize systems that leverage AI to dynamically generate multi-product workflows, allowing users to create complex automations with minimal effort.
• Develop and Optimize RAG Systems: Design and enhance retrieval-augmented generation pipelines to ensure AI models deliver accurate, relevant, and actionable responses.
• Collaborate with Product and Design Teams: Work closely with product managers, UX designers, and AI/ML specialists to deliver seamless AI-powered automation features that meet user needs.
• Deliver an API-First Vision: Architect and implement scalable APIs to support AI Assist and other Canvas functionalities, ensuring they’re reliable, secure, and optimized for performance.
• Benchmark and Monitor AI Models: Develop tools and frameworks to evaluate AI performance, ensuring continuous improvement and alignment with user needs.
• Capture and Use User Feedback: Create systems to gather user interaction data, enabling iterative refinement of AI models and features.
• Collaborate Across Teams: Partner with other engineering teams, the data team, and the staff engineering team to align on goals, share insights, and advocate for system-wide improvements.

You’ll also have the opportunity to specialize in key areas of the Canvas AI initiative. Specializing won’t limit your growth—Zapier values cross-functional collaboration and encourages engineers to work across teams to contribute to impactful projects.

How to Apply

At Zapier, we believe that diverse perspectives and experiences make us better, which is why we have a non-standard application process designed to promote inclusion and equity. We’re looking for the best fit for each of our roles, regardless of the type of companies in your background, so we encourage you to apply even if your skills and experiences don’t exactly match the job description. All we ask is that you answer a few in-depth questions in our application that would typically be asked at the start of an interview process. This helps speed things up by letting us get to know you and your skillset a bit better right out of the gate. Please be sure to answer each question; the resume and CV fields are optional.

Education is not a requirement for our roles; however, if you receive an offer, you will need to include your most recent educational experience as part of our background check process.

After you apply, you are going to hear back from us—even if we don’t see an immediate fit with our team. In fact, throughout the process, we strive to never go more than seven days without letting you know the status of your application. We know we’ll make mistakes from time to time, so if you ever have questions about where you stand or about the process, just ask your recruiter!

Zapier is an equal-opportunity employer and we’re excited to work with talented and empathetic people of all identities. Zapier does not discriminate based on someone’s identity in any aspect of hiring or employment as required by law and in line with our commitment to Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging and Equity. Our code of conduct provides a beacon for the kind of company we strive to be, and we celebrate our differences because those differences are what allow us to make a product that serves a global user base. Zapier will consider all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, consistent with applicable laws.

Zapier is committed to inclusion. As part of this commitment, Zapier welcomes applications from individuals with disabilities and will work to provide reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodations are needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please contact jobs@zapier.com.

 

Application Deadline:

The anticipated application window is 30 days from the date job is posted, unless the number of applicants requires it to close sooner or later, or if the position is filled.

Even though we’re an all-remote company, we still need to be thoughtful about where we have Zapiens working. Check out this resource for a list of countries where we currently cannot have Zapiens permanently working.