Principal Machine Learning Engineer (Memory & Context)

About the role

About the team The Agentic AI team at Zillow is at the forefront of transforming the real estate industry by helping millions of people use AI assistants to find their next home. We aim to redefine the home shopping and transaction experience by providing an always-on assistant that integrates personalized user insights with Zillow's knowledge.

Within this organization, our team owns how the assistant remembers and understands each user across a home search that can last for months: agent memory, context engineering, and the evaluation of agents running in production. We are a senior, fast-moving team of machine learning engineers who do the science and own taking it to production.

About the role As a Principal Machine Learning Engineer on the Agentic AI team, you will partner closely with Engineering, Science, Product, and Platform leaders to advance Zillow's agentic capabilities. You will: Shape the architecture for agent memory, how Zillow's assistant reasons about, writes, retrieves, updates, and retires memories across experiences.

Drive context engineering for production agents by assembling, prioritizing, and compressing context from conversation history, user memory, tools, and skills so every response is relevant, fast, and cost-efficient Collaborate across federated projects to build and orchestrate agents end to end, from prompt and context design through deployment and production operations Design and develop offline and online evaluation frameworks for memory and context quality, using them to guide product and technical decisions Stay at the forefront of emerging agentic paradigms, including memory architectures, long-context techniques, and self-evolving agentic systems, and translate them into tangible product innovation Lead complex, multi-team, cross-functional initiatives; align with peer technical leaders; and communicate technical direction clearly across Engineering, partner teams, and leadership This role has been categorized as a Remote position.

"Remote" employees do not have a permanent corporate office workplace and, instead, work from a physical location of their choice, which must be identified to the Company. U.S. employees may live in any of the 50 United States, with limited exceptions.

In California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Washington state, and Washington DC the standard base pay range for this role is $209,400.00 - $334,600.00 annually. This base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations.

In Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia the standard base pay range for this role is $199,000.00 - $317,800.00 annually. The base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations. In addition to a competitive base salary this position is also eligible for equity awards based on factors such as experience, performance and location.

Actual amounts will vary depending on experience, performance and location. Employees in this role will not be paid below the salary threshold for exempt employees in the state where they reside. Who you are You are a hands-on technical leader with high agency: when a problem is ambiguous or blocked, you go talk to the people who can solve it, and you make your work visible.

Must-haves A master's degree or above, or equivalent experience, in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field 5+ years of experience deploying large-scale ML systems, including at least the most recent year building and shipping LLM-based agents in production Hands-on experience building agents end to end: orchestration, prompt engineering and optimization, and context engineering Experience evaluating agentic systems and using those results to improve them Proven technical leadership: you have influenced technical direction across teams and mentored other engineers Strong communication skills, including presenting to senior leadership Strong programming skills in Python and familiarity with agentic AI frameworks such as LangGraph, Agents SDK, or AutoGen Nice-to-haves Experience designing agent or user memory systems (long-term, episodic, or user-profile memory) Experience with dialogue systems that sustain long, multi-session conversations Personalization of AI assistants from conversation history Publications, patents, or open-source contributions related to memory, long-context models, or agents Get to know us At Zillow, we're reimagining how people move-through the real estate market and through their careers.

As the most-visited real estate platform in the U.S., we help people navigate buying, selling, financing and renting with greater ease and confidence. Whether you're working in tech, sales, operations, or design, you'll be part of a company reshaping an industry and helping more people make home a reality. How we work is a key part of that transformation.

Through Cloud HQ, our strategic approach to distributed work, most employees have the flexibility to work from wherever they're most productive-enabling us to move fast, stay connected and deliver on our people promise.

Zillow is honored to be recognized among the best workplaces in the U.S. Zillow was named one of FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For® in 2026, and included on TIME's America's Best Companies 2026 list, reflecting our commitment to creating an innovative, inclusive, and engaging culture where employees are empowered to grow.

No matter where you sit in the organization, your work will help drive innovation, support our customers, and move the industry-and your career-forward, together. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please contact your recruiter directly.

Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies.

These include the duties and responsibilities listed above, as well as the abilities to adhere to company policies, exercise sound judgment, effectively manage stress and work safely and respectfully with others, exhibit trustworthiness and professionalism, and safeguard business operations and the Company's reputation.