{"id":829833,"url":"https://alion.io/job/zello-senior-software-engineer-ai-systems","title":"Senior Software Engineer, AI Systems","company":{"id":689100,"name":"Zello","domain":"zello.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/zello-2","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Austin, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":141000,"max_usd":257000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":637},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Prompt Engineering","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-28T20:58:59Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-28","last_verified_at":"2026-09-26T00:15:03Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":28,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":28},"description":"IMPORTANT: Please be aware, scammers may try to impersonate Zello by reaching out regarding job opportunities. We will never ask you for bank account information, checks, or other sensitive information as part of our hiring process. All correspondence will come from the zello.com email domain. If you’re unsure, please email  with questions.\nAbout Zello\nZello is a voice-first communication platform, powered by our industry-leading push-to-talk technology, to improve collaboration and productivity for desk-less workers. With over 175+ million users, we’re the #1 rated push-to-talk app in the world, delivering 9 billion (yes, with a B) messages a month.\nAt Zello, our company values are at the heart of what we do everyday. We’re proud to serve the frontline, we’re privileged to connect people in times of crisis across the globe, and we’re honored to support first responders.\nAnd this is where you come in.\nZello is the push-to-talk platform that connects millions of frontline workers, and the AI & Data team builds the agent systems that run the business behind it. We have more high-value AI work than we have capacity to build, and we need someone who can both ship it and hold a real engineering standard around it. You would be the person who makes our agent work genuinely engineered - tested, reviewed, monitored - and who raises how everyone here builds.\nAfter a successful first year, you will\nShipped and operated production agent systems that people across Zello use every day\n\nMade evals-driven development the team's default, so every agent ships with an eval suite and monitoring\n\nOwned the code review bar for agent work and raised the standard it is held to\n\nMeasurably levelled up teammates' engineering craft through review, pairing and coaching\n\nCut the time it takes to move an agent from prototype to production\n\nWhat you'll do\nBuild LLM-backed systems end to end and put them in front of people who are not engineers\n\nDesign eval suites and monitoring before shipping, not after something breaks\n\nReview agent pull requests and explain why a design will or will not hold up\n\nOperate what you ship: triage drift, chase down silent failures, fix root causes\n\nSet engineering conventions the team actually adopts - testing, structure, error handling\n\nPair with and coach teammates who are strong analysts and newer to software craft\n\nTell us when AI is the wrong tool for a problem, before we build it\n\nWho you are\nYou learned to program properly, and you can reason about code you did not write\n\nYou build things nobody asked you to build\n\nYou treat tests and evals as part of shipping, not as cleanup afterwards\n\nYou give code review feedback people act on, and you coach rather than direct\n\nYou connect engineering standards to outcomes rather than to taste\n\nYou hold a high bar without making people feel small about it\n\nYou have operated production systems that other people depended on\n\nThis Role Is Not\nNot a research role. No papers, no training models from scratch\n\nNot a front-end or product design role. The interfaces here are internal and functional\n\nNot a management track. This is an individual contributor seat with real influence over how the team builds\n\nNot a prompt-engineering role. This is software engineering applied to AI systems\n\nWe hire for potential, passion for our mission, and a knack for solving difficult problems over checking every qualification box. We have competitive pay, equity with significant upside, and intentionally design our benefits to encourage healthy and well-balanced employees, flexible schedules and time off. We even offer a sabbatical after every five years of service so you’re able to pursue and enjoy what matters most to you. And of course, we wouldn’t be a technology company without a ping-pong table and free snacks in our break room. Join us!\nZello provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.\nAll Zello personnel are required to comply with defined security, privacy, and compliance requirements applicable to their role along with requirements that are applicable to all Zello personnel.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4444,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Flexible schedule"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Team Communication & Collaboration"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-12T16:11:29Z"}],"liveness":{"score":65,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.727,"p_room":0.9,"age_days":27,"expected_fill_days":42,"reasons":["conf:1","win:mid"],"computed_at":"2026-09-25T05:45:01Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/zello-senior-software-engineer-ai-systems","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/zello-senior-software-engineer-ai-systems.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-09-26T04:14:01Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","usage":{"tier":"crawler","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":4614,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":386,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-09-27T00:00:00Z"}}}