Machine Learning Engineering Manager

Machine Learning Engineering Manager

Job Description

Zendesk’s people have one goal in mind: to make Customer Experience better. Our products help more than 125, 000 global brands (Airbnb, Uber, Jet
Brains, Slack, among others) make their billions of customers happy, every day.

The AI/ML Platform team is at the forefront of this mission. We build the foundation that powers every AI‑driven experience at Zendesk, enabling product teams to build, evaluate, and deploy large Language Model (LLM) applications reliably and at scale.

We’re looking for an Engineering Manager to lead the next wave of Gen AI infrastructure at Zendesk—our internal LLM Proxy, benchmarking framework, data annotations, and agentic workflow orchestration tools. You’ll empower Zendesk’s ML/AI teams by building secure, optimized, and friendly ML platforms that scale across use cases and products.

Responsibilities

• Lead a high‑performing team of AI/ML platform engineers to deliver the core infrastructure powering LLM‑based applications.
• Own the design, rollout, and optimization of Zendesk’s LLM Proxy, enabling safe, observable, and efficient access to multiple foundation models.
• Collaborate with existing ML/AI leadership to continually improve software delivery and service reliability.
• Partner with applied ML, product, and infrastructure teams to align platform investments with AI roadmap priorities.
• Establish strong engineering practices around observability, reliability, security, and cost monitoring.
• Foster a team culture that emphasizes mentorship, inclusion, and technical excellence.

Qualifications

• Proven experience managing high‑performing engineering teams in the ML/AI or infrastructure space.
• Deep understanding of LLM systems, Gen AI applications, or ML/AI platform components such as vector databases, serving layers, and orchestration tools.
• Experience owning the full lifecycle of an ML/AI platform—from early design to production deployment.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to influence technical direction across teams and partners.
• A pragmatic mindset that balances innovation with scalability and performance in enterprise environments.
• A dedication to continual development and a collaborative, upbeat work ethic where you can take ownership and have fun.

Tech Stack

• Python for code.
• AWS for servers.
• LLM vendors: Open
  AI, Anthropic, Google, Llama.
• Infrastructure: Kubernetes, Docker, Kafka, AWS.

Benefits

• Full ownership of the projects you work on.
• Opportunity to make a huge impact.
• Team of passionate people who love what they do.
• Exciting projects and the ability to implement your own ideas and improvements.
• Professional development funds.
• Comfortable office and a remote setup.
• Choice of your laptop and other equipment.
• Premium Medical Insurance and Private Life Assurance.
• Flexible working hours.
• Life balance support.

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 office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, and 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.