Software Engineer, Release Engineering

AI at Zapier

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Check out our guidance on How to Collaborate with AI During Zapier’s Hiring Process, including how to use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or others during our hiring process – and when not to.

Hi there!

I’m Phil Carvalho, and I lead Release Engineering at Zapier. Our team owns the systems that move code from merge to production — CI/CD pipelines, testing infrastructure, release orchestration, and the golden paths every engineer at Zapier relies on. I’m excited to be hiring Software Engineers (L3 and L4) who want to work on the systems that make every engineer at Zapier faster and safer.

This role sits at the intersection of software engineering and platform engineering. You’ll build backend services and internal tools, but you’ll also own CI/CD pipelines, release tooling, and delivery infrastructure. We’re looking for engineers who write production code AND deeply understand how that code gets built, tested, and shipped.

This team is being built in the India timezone to operate independently, on top of the platform foundation provided by our SREs in cloud/infra. Our charter is the software layer of delivery. As Zapier scales its enterprise capabilities and integrates AI more deeply into the development lifecycle, the reliability and speed of our delivery systems becomes a direct lever on how fast the company can ship.

About You

• You build software and you understand how it gets shipped. You can write a production service end-to-end, and you can also diagnose why a CI pipeline is slow or a test suite is flaky.
• You have real depth in CI/CD systems, testing strategy, and release orchestration — not just as a user, but as someone who has built or meaningfully improved these systems.
• You have hands-on experience with platform tools such as GitLab CI, Kubernetes, Docker, ArgoCD, Terraform, or similar. You don’t just use these tools — you build and improve the systems around them.
• You take loosely defined problems and drive them to production, writing design docs, defining success criteria, and following through on rollout and measurement without being told to.
• You think in systems, not components, and design solutions with downstream users, second-order effects, and long-term maintainability in mind — the engineers depending on your systems are your first-class users.
• You have strong backend or fullstack engineering fundamentals and have built and operated production APIs and services at scale (TypeScript, Node.js, Python, or equivalent).
• You are comfortable making pragmatic technical decisions under uncertainty and can articulate your reasoning clearly.
• You use AI tools actively in your engineering workflow and think critically about where they add value versus where you need to validate outputs carefully.
• You collaborate effectively across teams in an async-first environment, aligning stakeholders and communicating tradeoffs without losing momentum.
• You raise the bar around you through code review, design feedback, and contributing to team practices and standards.

Level Expectations

L3 — Software Engineer You understand how the systems you work on fit together end-to-end. You can take a well-defined task and deliver it from start to finish, including tests, documentation, and deployment. You have hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines and testing infrastructure — you’ve built or improved these systems, not just used them. You call out risks early, ask for help when needed, and communicate progress clearly. You debug issues using logs and metrics, and when something is beyond your scope, you know how to involve the right people. You use AI tools in your daily work and remain accountable for the quality of what ships.

L4 — Senior Software Engineer You go beyond your own tasks. You lead technical design for projects, especially those involving CI/CD systems, release orchestration, or cross-team platform dependencies. You define and break down work, helping others execute effectively. When issues arise in pipelines or release systems, you assess impact, coordinate responses, and drive long-term improvements. You create reusable patterns and golden paths that other engineers adopt. You mentor engineers and identify recurring problems that inform roadmap-level improvements.

Note: Final leveling is determined during the interview process and aligned with Zapier’s leveling framework.

Things You’ll Do

• Design, build, and operate the CI/CD systems, release orchestration, and testing infrastructure that every Zapier engineer depends on.
• Define and evolve the golden paths for how code gets built, tested, and shipped at Zapier.
• Own end-to-end delivery of complex initiatives, from design doc through rollout and impact measurement.
• Build internal tooling and APIs that make Zapier engineers more effective and reduce time from merge to production.
• Debug complex production issues across pipelines and release systems, participate in incident response, and drive systemic improvements.
• Lead technical design discussions and write clear documentation that influences decisions across teams.
• Mentor engineers on the team and raise the technical bar through code reviews, design feedback, and knowledge sharing.
• Partner with the cloud/infra SRE team on the boundary between platform foundation and the delivery layer on top of it.

Compensation

• Base Salary – IC3 ₹52,97,600 – ₹79,46,400 • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus
• Base Salary – IC4 ₹64,10,100 – ₹96,15,100 • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus