Engineer, Backend (Events Team)

AI AT ZAPIER At Zapier https://zapier.com/about, we build and use automation every day to make work more efficient, creative, and human. So if you’re using AI tools while applying here - that’s great! We just ask that you use them responsibly and transparently. Check out our guidance on How to Collaborate with AI During Zapier’s Hiring Process https://zapier.com/l/jobs/ai-at-zapier, including how to use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or others during our hiring process - and when not to. Posted: December 25, 2026 Updated: February 25, 2026 Location: Americas HI THERE! Zapier's mission is to make work easier and more productive for everyone. The Events team is at the heart of that: we own and operate the event streaming and queuing infrastructure that powers Zapier at scale, processing over 24 billion events per day. If you're the kind of engineer who gets excited about owning critical infrastructure, solving hard reliability problems, and building tooling that hundreds of engineers depend on every day, this role is for you. THE WORK You'll be joining a small, senior team that operates Kafka (MSK), SQS, and RabbitMQ as shared infrastructure for most of Zapier's engineering organization. We sit within Zapier's Internal Platform Zone (ZIP), and our systems are Tier-1: when something goes wrong, it affects everyone. The work is a blend of platform operations and backend engineering. On any given week that might mean tuning Kafka consumer groups, building a library that simplifies how other teams emit events, contributing to our multi-region expansion, or running an incident response. We work in Kanban, pair frequently, and take on-call seriously but sustainably. Current projects include: - Building a new SQS-based queuing library to eventually replace our Celery/RabbitMQ setup - Multi-region infrastructure to support Zapier's enterprise growth - An AI-powered Events chatbot to help internal teams self-serve faster - Ongoing observability improvements and SLO work ABOUT YOU - You have 4+ years of software engineering experience with Python as your primary language. You write Python daily and have used it to build production systems, with at least 2 years focused on building and operating event streaming systems at scale. Go or TypeScript experience is a plus, but won't substitute for Python depth. Your depth of expertise makes you a valuable asset to our engineering team. - You value collaboration. You understand that building modern software is a team sport, and you enjoy working as part of a tight-knit team. You’re happy to pitch in and help the team, whether by reviewing code, pairing on a tricky problem, or just thinking about how to solve the challenges we’re facing. - You value exploration and versatility. You are comfortable working on problems that may not be well defined. You are eager to jump in to learn, research, and propose options to consider when solving a hard problem that the team has not faced before. You love researching new technology, experimenting with new ideas, and driving forward with implementation details. - You can balance lots of concerns. You will manage incoming work, prioritize tasks effectively, and stay organized. Your role is crucial in meeting project/internal customer demands and delivering reliable and well tested solutions all while working in a fast-paced environment. - You advocate for the user. You have a keen eye for great design, and you’re empathetic to the needs of the end-user. When you see users struggling to succeed you take it as a personal challenge to understand why and help the team build a better product. - You embody our values. At Zapier, our values https://zapier.com/jobs/culture-and-values-at-zapier are at the heart of how we work together and how we think about our customers. In our remote setting, they help develop trust and ensure we work and collaborate to democratize automation. Required Technical Skills/Experience: - Experience working with event architectures and services based on technologies like Kafka (MSK) and Avro. You have supported event-system infrastructure to ensure resiliency and uptime. - Participated in the design or maintenance of highly available, cloud-based infrastructure in AWS or another cloud provider. You understand how to leverage infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform) and have learned best practices for reliability and observability. - Strong experience with AWS services, cloud computing technologies, and distributed data stores. - Experience with languages like Python or Go to create automated tools. You believe in hands-off deployments and infrastructure as code. Nice-to-Have Skills/Experience: - Strong problem-solving and analytical thinking skills, combined with excellent collaboration and communication abilities. - A natural curiosity and eagerness to learn and explore new technologies and solutions. - SRE experience working with and supporting existing systems to ensure up time and reliability. - Experience working with queues in the cloud or SAAS solutions. SQS experience is highly preferred. - Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines (e.g., using a tool like GitLab). THINGS YOU’LL DO - Operate and improve Kafka (MSK), SQS, and RabbitMQ infrastructure: configuration, performance tuning, schema management (Avro), and reliability work - Build backend services, toolkits, and libraries in Python (primary) and Go or TypeScript that help other teams integrate with our event systems - Use Terraform to manage infrastructure as code across AWS: MSK, SQS, Lambda, S3, Aurora, and Redis - Monitor system health using Grafana and Datadog, define and maintain SLOs, and troubleshoot issues proactively - Participate in on-call rotations (3-day, 24-hour shifts) and lead or support incident response for Tier-1 systems - Contribute to data governance: schema design, event structure, and data hygiene practices across Zapier - Collaborate with cross-functional teams including Edge, Runner, Data, and SRE You’ll also have the opportunity to specialize in a variety of areas of the Zapier codebase. Focusing on a specialization will not limit your growth at Zapier as we believe that each engineer brings a unique perspective and can contribute in all areas. We encourage collaboration and will frequently have engineers contribute across teams to assist with projects as needed.   HOW TO APPLY At Zapier, we believe that diverse perspectives and experiences make us better, which is why we have a non-standard application process designed to promote inclusion and equity. We're looking for the best fit for each of our roles, regardless of the type of companies in your background, so we encourage you to apply even if your skills and experiences don’t exactly match the job description. All we ask is that you answer a few in-depth questions in our application that would typically be asked at the start of an interview process. This helps speed things up by letting us get to know you and your skillset a bit better right out of the gate. Please be sure to answer each question; the resume and CV fields are optional. Education is not a requirement for our roles; however, if you receive an offer, you will need to include your most recent educational experience as part of our background check process. After you apply, you are going to hear back from us—even if we don’t see an immediate fit with our team. In fact, throughout the process, we strive to never go more than seven days without letting you know the status of your application. We know we’ll make mistakes from time to time, so if you ever have questions about where you stand or about the process, just ask your recruiter! Zapier is an equal-opportunity employer and we're excited to work with talented and empathetic people of all identities. Zapier does not discriminate based on someone's identity in any aspect of hiring or employment as required by law and in line with our commitment to Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging and Equity. Our code of conduct https://zapier.com/jobs/zapier-code-of-conduct provides a beacon for the kind of company we strive to be, and we celebrate our differences because those differences are what allow us to make a product that serves a global user base. Zapier will consider all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, consistent with applicable laws. Zapier prioritizes the security of our customers' information and is dedicated to adhering to all applicable data privacy laws. You can review our privacy policy here https://zapier.com/legal/data-privacy. Zapier is committed to inclusion. As part of this commitment, Zapier welcomes applications from individuals with disabilities and will work to provide reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodations are needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please contact jobs@zapier.com. APPLICATION DEADLINE: The anticipated application window is 30 days from the date job is posted, unless the number of applicants requires it to close sooner or later, or if the position is filled. Even though we’re an all-remote company, we still need to be thoughtful about where we have Zapiens working. Check out this resource https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VzesvLsgVG2RDRPtGvBF8CbcB9ZA-Hsddg0P2ildBb8/edit for a list of countries where we currently cannot have Zapiens permanently working.