Sr. Software Engineer, Workflow (Backend)

Zapier • San Francisco, CA

2d • Remote

About The Position

Zapier’s Workflow Zone is responsible for the core engine that powers our automation platform. As more teams and organizations depend on Zapier to automate critical workflows, we’re investing in scaling the capabilities, reliability, and intelligence of our core product experience.
We’re hiring a Sr. Backend Engineer to join the Runner team in our Workflow Zone. If you’re passionate about building robust systems, enabling advanced user workflows, and shaping the future of automation, we’d love to hear from you.
The Workflow Zone is where Zapier’s automation magic happens. This zone owns the product experience and execution engine behind creating, running, and debugging workflows (Zaps). We’re focused on building powerful, flexible tools that help individuals and teams automate their work with speed and confidence.
As automation use cases grow more complex—especially for Enterprise users—we’re evolving the platform to support more sophisticated logic, scalable execution, and AI-native experiences. This means:
Building intuitive and resilient workflow authoring experiences
Expanding execution capabilities and logic primitives
Introducing AI-powered tools for creation and troubleshooting
Improving reliability, observability, and control across the system
The Runner team is responsible for reliably executing Zaps—fast. We’re focused on the core infrastructure that powers Zapier’s workflows, including scaling for high volume and reducing latency across millions of executions daily.
This is a foundational team at the platform layer—ideal for engineers who like deep technical challenges and shipping resilient, high-scale services.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional experience developing software, including at least 2 years in a senior-level role
• Strong backend experience, ideally in Python and Django and/or TypeScript and Node.js, building reliable, scalable, and observable services
• Familiarity with relational databases like PostgreSQL or MySQL, and the ability to model, query, and optimize data effectively
• Experience designing and consuming RESTful APIs, building event-driven systems, and working with data integrations across services
• Proven ability to lead complex technical projects—owning design decisions, balancing tradeoffs, and guiding implementation across multiple contributors
• You proactively coach and support teammates, foster growth through mentorship, and contribute to a culture of feedback and continuous improvement
• You navigate ambiguity with confidence—able to clarify priorities, align stakeholders, and drive toward meaningful outcomes even when goals shift
• You’ve used AI tooling for work or personal use—or you are willing to dive in and learn fast. You explore new tools, workflows, and ideas to make things more efficient, and are eager to deepen your understanding of AI and use it regularly.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain Zapier’s execution engine, scaling it to handle millions of daily runs
• Improve system performance, reduce latency, and strengthen failure handling
• Design and implement execution primitives that power reliable automation
• Collaborate across infrastructure, product, and platform teams on core system design

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed