Sr Staff Software Engineer

Job description

Job Description

Zendesk is building the next generation of Employee Service products—and we’re making it easier than ever for customers to get started.

The Product-Led Growth (PLG) team owns the end-to-end self-service onboarding experience, trials, and in-product configuration flows that accelerate time-to-value for our customers.

We’re looking for a Senior Staff Software Engineer (Fullstack or backend) to help define and build the technical foundation for these experiences.

From guided onboarding to AI-driven setup, and from embedded integration flows to a full-featured template marketplace, you’ll architect scalable backend services and contribute to the frameworks that power our product-led motion.

If you love designing elegant service experiences that are easy to adopt and powerful to scale, this is the role for you.

What You’ll Do

Lead Engineering Excellence & Innovation

• Independently lead the system design, development, testing, and deployment of high-quality, efficient software solutions.

• Work across multiple teams and disciplines to architect reliable, secure, performant, extensible, and scalable solutions for enterprise customers.

• Make high-impact technical decisions and effectively communicate rationale to engineering teams and stakeholders.

• Ensure code quality, maintainability, and scalability, adhering to best practices and industry standards.

• Contribute to the evolution of Zendesk’s architecture, helping to modernize our custom data platform while improving extensibility and performance.

• Develop and integrate event-driven architectures, ensuring real-time service execution tracking, automation processing, and rule-based workflow execution.

Collaborate & Deliver High-Impact Solutions

• Work closely with Product Managers, Designers, and Engineering Leaders to define and execute on technical strategy.

• Proactively identify and mitigate potential issues in development, testing, or delivery stages.

• Participate in application improvement discussions, project initiatives, and feature design to drive continuous enhancements.

• Build reusable components and code that improve development efficiency and consistency.

• Participate in code reviews, providing constructive feedback to maintain high engineering standards.

• Own end-to-end delivery, ensuring features are shipped with high quality, reliability, and performance.

Mentor, Guide, and Strengthen the Team

• Mentor, pair with, and train team members to foster continuous learning and growth.

• Promote a learning culture within the team, ensuring equal opportunities for skill development.

• Conduct research and introduce best practices to enhance team efficiency and innovation.

• Participate in on-call rotations after an initial training period, ensuring system reliability and uptime.

• Lead common agile development ceremonies, contributing to process improvements.

• Show strategic forward-thinking and provide technical leadership to drive long-term success.

What We’re Looking For

Required Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in backend or full-stack software engineering, with expertise in enterprise-scale service request workflows, structured service automation, or approval-driven orchestration engines.

• Proficient in programming languages and relational databases such as MySQL/Aurora designing high-performance, API-driven service management architectures.

• Strong backend expertise, with experience designing high-scale API-driven service management architectures.

• Strong expertise in JavaScript, TypeScript or related front end technologies, as well as frameworks like React, Redux etc.

• Experience with testing libraries such as Cypress, Jest, and React Testing Library.

• Deep experience working with GraphQL and REST APIs, designing and implementing scalable data layers.

• Deep knowledge of data modeling for hierarchical service catalogs, structured service request processing, and catalog-driven workflow automation.

• Experience designing workflow orchestration engines, integrating service automation, approval rules, and fulfillment triggers.

• Proven ability to architect, design, and deliver large-scale, enterprise-grade software solutions.

• Strong experience with version control tools, CI/CD pipelines, and modern development workflows.

• Experience leading and mentoring teams of engineers while collaborating closely with Design, Product, and Engineering counterparts.

• Expertise in multi-tenant SaaS architecture, ensuring backend scalability, data integrity, and structured service workflow extensibility.

• Ability to operate autonomously and drive projects forward with minimal oversight.

• Excellent problem-solving, critical thinking, and collaboration skills.

• Strong verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills in English.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with ITSM systems or Employee Services systems.

• Experience designing GraphQL and REST APIs from the ground up.

• Contributions to enterprise change control or automation tooling.

• Previous experience with Zendesk’s platform and ecosystem.

Tech Stack You’ll Work With

• Backend: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, MySQL

• Frontend: JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Redux, GraphQL

• DevOps & Monitoring: DataDog, CI/CD tools

• Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes (nice-to-have)

Why You Should Apply

• Make a real impact.
  
  Your work will power thousands of businesses and millions of customer interactions worldwide.

• Work with a top-tier engineering team.
  
  We solve complex problems at a global scale.

• Lead a critical initiative.
  
  Drive the modernization of Zendesk’s Employee Service platform.

• Grow your career.
  
  We invest in leadership development, mentorship, and learning opportunities.

• Enjoy flexibility.
  
  Hybrid-friendly culture with strong work-life balance.

Ready to Lead and Innovate?

We’d love to hear from you.

Apply now and help us shape the future of customer experience.

Please note that Zendesk can only hire candidates who are physically located and plan to work from Karnataka or Maharashtra.

Please refer to the location posted on the requisition for where this role is based.

Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

This role must attend our local office for part of the week.

The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.