Machine Learning Engineer I

Join us at Zendesk, where were on a mission to power exceptional service for every person on the planet. Were accelerating that ambition by building products rooted in AI, automation, and intelligent customer experiences, because behind every interaction lies an opportunity to make a human connection.
Were seeking a Senior Machine Learning Engineer to lead the next wave of GenAI infrastructure at Zendesk. Youll build and operate benchmarking, evaluation, and inference infrastructure that ensures our AI-driven experiences are reliable, safe, cost?effective, and aligned with customer support workflows. Your work will enable product and ML teams to move fast while keeping quality, observability, and trust at the center.
Summary
As a Senior ML Engineer on the AI/ML Platform team, youll design and deliver production?grade systems for LLM benchmarking (A/B and offline), LLM Proxy access, observability, cost control, and orchestration for multi?step/agentic workflows. Youll partner with ML researchers, applied teams, and product managers to make GenAI features safe, measurable, and scalable across Zendesk products.
What Youll Be Doing

• Build and maintain benchmarking frameworks for LLMs (A/B tests, offline/e2e evaluation pipelines) to measure quality, latency, and cost trade?offs.
• Design, develop, and operate LLM Proxy functionality: routing, safety filters, caching, rate limiting, and cost attribution across vendors.
• Implement monitoring, observability, and alerting for LLM services (latency, error rates, hallucination signals, cost per call).
• Lead the design and automation of evaluation suites and gold?standard datasets for ticket replies, summaries, intent detection, and recommendations.
• Collaborate with applied ML, product, and platform teams to translate evaluation findings into model improvements, release criteria, and mitigation strategies.
• Build orchestration tooling for multi?step agentic workflows and integrations that safely interact with external tools and Zendesk products.
• Establish engineering best practices around security, reliability, testing, CI/CD, and performance tuning for ML services.
• Mentor engineers, help define roadmap priorities, and drive cross?team initiatives that increase platform adoption and developer productivity.
  
  
  

What You Bring To The Role

• 5+ years building and running ML systems or backend platforms in production, with strong ownership from design to deployment.
• Hands-on experience with LLM systems, inference-serving patterns, or GenAI application infrastructure (prompting, caching, vendor routing).
• Strong backend engineering skills (Python or another server-side language), familiarity with distributed systems, and production CI/CD practices.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Docker, cloud platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure), and monitoring/observability tooling.
• Demonstrated ability to design evaluation pipelines, build gold?standard datasets, or run rigorous A/B and offline evaluations.
• Clear communicator who can translate technical tradeoffs into product decisions and measurable outcomes.
• Curious, collaborative, and committed to building reliable, safe, and cost?effective GenAI infrastructure.
  

Basic Qualifications

• BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years industry experience delivering production ML systems or backend services.
• Proficiency in Python and experience with containerized deployments and cloud infrastructure.

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  Proven experience designing and running model evaluation, monitoring, or A/B testing for ML services.
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with LLM vendors (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Llama) and vector databases.
• Background in building agentic orchestration or tool-using AI systems.
• Prior experience implementing cost attribution, vendor routing, or request-level caching for LLMs.
• Advanced degree (MS/PhD) or demonstrated research contributions in ML/NLP.
  

Location
Pune, India (On site)
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.
The Intelligent Heart Of Customer Experience
Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.
Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.
As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.
Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and were proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.
Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to [HIDDEN TEXT] with your specific accommodation request.