Sr. Engineer, Backend (MCP)

Zapier • San Francisco, CA

11h • Remote

About The Position

Zapier is leading the way in AI automation. We’ve helped businesses increase productivity and serve their customers better through an extensive platform of integrations, robust workflow automations, and practical AI applications. Zapier’s External Platform Zone is building the infrastructure that will power the next generation of automation. At the core of this effort is Model Context Protocol (MCP) — an open standard designed to let AI agents seamlessly reason, act, and orchestrate workflows across Zapier’s 8,000+ integrations.
We’re hiring a Senior Backend Engineer to help design and scale the systems that enable this vision. You’ll own APIs, build platform primitives, and work closely with cross-functional partners to define how agents access the real world through Zapier.
If you’re excited about working on foundational systems, love thinking in protocols and architecture, and want to help define how AI agents get work done — this is your role.
High Visibility, High Impact
MCP is one of the most strategically important initiatives at Zapier. It’s foundational to our AI roadmap and plays a central role in how we show up in the broader AI ecosystem.
This is an opportunity to:
Define how AI agents interact with third-party systems through Zapier
Shape a new protocol that impacts both internal platform teams and external developers
Work on high-trust, cross-functional projects with visibility at the executive level
Influence long-term architecture for Zapier’s most ambitious product experiences
Be part of a fast-moving, experimental team that values curiosity, clarity, and velocity

Requirements

• You’re a seasoned backend builder. You have 6+ years of experience designing, developing and maintaining complex production systems. You’re comfortable writing backend services (Python or Node.js ideal), and you’re not afraid to go deep into API design, database modeling, or CI/CD pipelines.
• You understand and leverage AI tooling. You know how to use AI tools to accelerate your own development process (e.g. GitHub Copilot, Cursor), and you also get excited about building systems that enable others to use AI effectively. You’ve worked with or implemented components like model context protocol or agent frameworks.
• You thrive on platform thinking. You’ve built or contributed to platform products before, with a focus on extensibility, documentation, and robust foundations. You can make the complex simple for our customers.
• You lead with customer empathy and curiosity. You continuously seek context, ask great questions, and stay oriented to the bigger picture to meet the needs of customers to help them solve problems that matter to them.
• You bias toward action, especially when next steps aren’t obvious. You create structure, clarity, and momentum for the team surrounding your projects. You’re pragmatic and know when to ship fast and iterate - and when to sweat the details.
• You demonstrate an ownership mindset. You take initiative without needing top-down direction, but you’re also an effective communicator who can bring others with you. You have sound judgment, and balance user needs, technical constraints, and product goals in your decisions.
• You’re a self-starter who is comfortable with ambiguity. You can turn loosely defined problems into concrete action, you follow through on commitments, and you surface blockers early to recruit help defining solutions.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and evolve core APIs that enable agents to take meaningful actions across Zapier’s integration ecosystem
• Build systems that support scalable orchestration, robust logging, and high-availability execution
• Influence and collaborate on the core performance for MCP focusing on memory, context windows, token usage, and reasoning steps
• Integrate with Zapier’s existing execution infrastructure and help build the interfaces between LLM clients and Zapier
• Partner closely with Product, Design, Platform, and Sales teams to ensure the protocol serves both external and internal needs
• Drive design decisions that prioritize scalability, performance, security, and clarity for developers and AI systems alike

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed