Staff Platform Engineer, AI Enablement
Lead the design and build of internal developer platforms and AI guardrails at Zocdoc. Focus on enabling both engineers and non-technical teams with secure, scalable, easy-to-use tools, CI/CD, and AI workflows while driving adoption through empathy and measurable outcomes. Requires 7+ years platform experience and a Bachelor's degree.
About the job
You'll Enjoy This Role If You...
- Enjoy building platforms that enable productivity, consistency, and autonomy for diverse audiences
- Enjoy learning and teaching others about leveraging AI-based technologies to achieve real-world results
- Are motivated by making other people more effective; not just shipping your own features
- Like designing cohesive developer and/or non-technical experiences that teams actually want to adopt
- Care deeply about empathy, usability, and reducing cognitive load
- Prefer solving real problems through thoughtful design, iteration, and collaboration
- Are comfortable translating complex technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders — and enjoy doing it
- Find satisfaction in building systems that scale predictably and help others succeed
- Thrive in environments with ambiguity, frequent change, and evolving prioritization — and bring clarity where there was none
- Are a natural collaborator
Your Day to Day
- Design and build platform services and solutions that are secure, scalable, and intentionally easy to use — including CI/CD pipelines, developer tooling, shared infrastructure patterns, and AI-powered developer workflows
- Contribute to the technical direction of Zocdoc's internal developer platform, including paved roads, tooling, and shared workflows for both engineering and non-engineering builders
- Build and maintain opinionated platforms and guardrails that enable non-technical teams to safely create, share, and operationalize AI tools — without introducing security vulnerabilities, access control failures, or operational bottlenecks
- Define and evolve the software development lifecycle for non-traditional builders: access controls, credential management, testing patterns, on-call/support paths, and contribution workflows
- Collaborate across teams to understand real developer pain points and non-technical stakeholder needs; validate platform bets; and drive adoption of platform capabilities across both audiences
- Own and deliver high-impact platform investments end to end — from problem framing through implementation and rollout
- Improve measurable outcomes such as build times, deployment safety, AI tool adoption rates, and operational simplicity
- Champion platform-as-product thinking by treating internal engineers and non-technical builders as first-class users — and continuously refining the experience based on their feedback
- Advance platform capabilities in AI-assisted development, helping shape how all Zocdoc builders use AI in their daily workflows with the right guardrails for safety, quality, and testability
- Work with cutting-edge generative AI tools and technology to accelerate platform development and model best practices for the broader organization
- Mentor engineers and technologists across the business and raise the bar for technical design and code quality
- Ensure platform patterns align with security, compliance, and reliability expectations without becoming a bottleneck
You'll Be Successful in This Role If You...
- Have 7+ years of experience building or evolving internal developer platforms, productivity tooling, or CI/CD systems used by multiple teams
- Have designed and operated distributed systems in AWS or similar cloud environments
- Bring strong judgment around platform abstractions and APIs — knowing when to standardize and when to stay flexible
- Can take ambiguous problems, break them into deliverable pieces, and drive them to measurable outcomes
- Communicate technical trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences — translating engineering concepts into terms that resonate with stakeholders outside of software development
- Treat adoption as a first-class engineering problem, not an afterthought — and know that adoption across non-technical teams requires an even higher bar of empathy and communication
- Have experience (or strong, informed opinions) building guardrails, access controls, and safe onboarding paths for non-engineers using AI tools
- Are motivated by enabling other engineers and non-technical builders to work reliably, safely, and with confidence
- Value learning, curiosity, and operational excellence — and model those qualities for the team
- Are comfortable in fast-moving, high-change environments where priorities evolve and alignment requires active investment
- Have integrated generative AI tools into daily workflows to automate tasks, foster innovation, and maximize productivity
- Hold a Bachelor's degree in CS, Math, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience)
Strategy vs. Execution Split
- ~20% Strategy and Influence (contributing to platform direction, participating in cross-team alignment, surfacing trade-offs and priorities)
- ~80% Hands-On Technical Leadership (designing and building platform capabilities, reviewing architecture and code, partnering with teams on adoption and iteration)
Benefits
- Flexible work environment for those based in NYC (Role is open to remote)
- Unlimited Vacation
- 100% paid employee health benefit options (including medical, dental, and vision)
- 401(k) with employer funded match
- Corporate wellness program with Wellhub
- Sabbatical leave (for employees with 5+ years of service)
- Competitive paid parental leave and fertility/family planning reimbursement
- Cell phone reimbursement
- Employee Resource Groups and ZocClubs to promote shared community and belonging
- Great Place to Work Certified
NYC Base Salary Range $210,000–$270,000 USD
Skills
AWS, CI/CD, Generative AI, Distributed Systems, Platform Engineering, Developer Tooling, Guardrails, Access Controls, APIs, Mentoring
Similar jobs
DevOps / SRE jobsLeads technical direction for Airbnb’s service developer tooling platform, spanning AI-assisted development, JVM build infrastructure, testing, modernization, and observability. Requires 9+ years of industry experience, strong backend and distributed-systems expertise, and the ability to influence organizations and deliver multi-quarter infrastructure initiatives.
Leads the design and development of scalable, secure network traffic systems and cloud infrastructure. The role requires 8+ years of coding experience, strong distributed-systems and concurrency expertise, and deep knowledge of networking and performance optimization.
Build diagnostics, automation, observability, and repair tooling for Crusoe’s large-scale GPU fleet and data centers. The role requires software engineering expertise in distributed systems, reliability, cloud platforms, and at least one of Go, Python, Java, or Rust.
Leads reliability engineering for Reddit’s critical user-facing systems, improving availability, scalability, performance, automation, and incident response at internet scale. Requires 8+ years operating distributed systems and strong expertise in programming, observability, high availability, and production troubleshooting.
Provides technical leadership for reliability, scalability, and operational excellence across Reddit’s advertising systems. The role requires 8+ years operating large-scale distributed systems, strong software engineering skills, and expertise in cloud-native architectures, observability, and incident response.