Senior Software Engineer (AI)

About this role

<p><strong>About Zuora</strong></p> <p>At Zuora, we help businesses grow smarter and adapt faster. Our platform powers modern business models — from subscriptions and usage-based pricing to AI-driven and outcome-based offerings — helping companies launch new products, automate complex billing, and unlock predictable, recurring revenue.</p> <p>We’ve led the Subscription Economy for more than a decade. Now we’re evolving again by building the definitive platform for quote to cash and helping companies monetize their products and services with an adaptable, AI-ready foundation.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Role Overview</strong></p> <p>Zuora is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to architect and scale our <strong>Agentic Deal Desk</strong> product. In this high-impact IC role, you will build resilient, high-throughput Java microservices alongside the underlying <strong>AI agent harness</strong>—the runtime scaffolding, execution loop, tool dispatch system, and state management engine that converts non-deterministic LLMs into reliable, enterprise-grade deal-desk agents.</p> <p><br><strong>Location &amp; Work Arrangements</strong></p> <p>This role is based in our <strong>Foster City, CA office</strong> and follows a <strong>hybrid work model</strong>. Team members are expected to work onsite <strong>three days per week</strong> to foster collaboration, innovation, and team connectivity.</p> <p>This is <strong>not a fully remote position</strong>.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Key Responsibilities</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong>Agent Harness Engineering:</strong> Build and own the core agent harness layer, including the execution loop (ReAct/Plan-Act), state persistence, dynamic prompt assembly, output schema validation, and retry mechanisms.</li> <li><strong>Tool Dispatch &amp; Sandboxing:</strong> Design safe tool-execution runtimes and schema-validated function dispatchers that allow agents to execute complex deal operations, policy checks, and pricing adjustments securely.</li> <li><strong>Context &amp; Memory Management:</strong> Engineer context compaction, short-term session scratchpads, and long-term memory retrieval pipelines (RAG/vector search) to eliminate context degradation during multi-turn deal negotiations.</li> <li><strong>Guardrails &amp; Feedback Loops:</strong> Build computational and inferential feedback sensors (evaluators, deterministic policy linters, and verification checks) to enforce strict margin guardrails, discount limits, and compliance rules.</li> <li><strong>Backend Architecture:</strong> Design low-latency, event-driven Core Java microservices to back the harness, driving state transitions, audit logs, and integration with Zuora Billing and CRM platforms.</li> <li><strong>Technical Leadership:</strong> Set technical standards for agent harness design, drive evaluation/eval-driven development practices, and mentor senior engineers across squads.</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Required Qualifications</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong>Core Java Mastery:</strong> 8+ years of hands-on experience in modern Java (17+), JVM internals, concurrency models, Spring Boot, and cloud-native distributed architecture.</li> <li><strong>Agent Harness &amp; Runtime Systems:</strong> Deep experience building the infrastructure surrounding LLMs—agent loops, state-machine tracking, tool calling/dispatch systems, context window management, and structured output parsing.</li> <li><strong>Agentic Frameworks &amp; AI Tooling:</strong> Practical experience with LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, LlamaIndex, or custom in-house agent orchestration runtimes and vector databases (e.g., Pgvector, Pinecone).</li> <li><strong>Distributed Infrastructure:</strong> Heavy background in event-driven architecture (Kafka/RabbitMQ), high-performance caching (Redis), relational databases (PostgreSQL/MySQL), and REST/gRPC API design.</li> <li><strong>Cloud &amp; Runtime Security:</strong> Experience with AWS, Docker/container isolation, Kubernetes, and securing agent execution pathways against improper tool invocations or prompt injection.</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Preferred Experience</strong></p> <ul> <li><strong>AWS Agentic Enablement:</strong> Production experience leveraging Amazon Bedrock Agents (Action Groups, Knowledge Bases, Multi-Agent Collaboration) and Guardrails for Amazon Bedrock to enforce policy boundaries and tool permissions.</li> <li><strong>Serverless Agent Scaffolding:</strong> Experience utilizing AWS Lambda, Step Functions, DynamoDB, and ECS/Fargate for isolated tool-execution environments, persistent session state checkpointing, and agent workflow orchestration.</li> <li><strong>AWS AI Observability &amp; Evals:</strong> Familiarity with continuous agent monitoring, trace/span evaluation frameworks (e.g., Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Evaluations, CloudWatch), and LLM-as-a-judge pipelines for non-deterministic applications.</li> <li><strong>Domain Expertise:</strong> Experience in Enterprise Deal Desk operations, revenue operations, quote-to-cash workflows, dynamic pricing engines, or high-volume SaaS approval chains.</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Benefits</strong></p> <p>Zuora offers a comprehensive total rewards package designed to support ZEOs’ wellbeing, growth, and flexibility. While specific offerings may vary by country, we typically provide:</p> <ul> <li>Competitive compensation, variable bonus and performance-based reward opportunities, and retirement programs</li> <li>Medical Insurance</li> <li>Generous, flexible time off, plus paid holidays, wellness days, and a company-wide year-end break</li> <li>Paid parental leave (including fully paid leave for eligible ZEOs, subject to local policy)</li> <li>Learning &amp; development stipend to support ongoing growth</li> <li>Opportunities to volunteer and give back, including charitable donation matching where available</li> <li>Mental wellbeing resources and support</li> </ul> <p><em>*Benefits may vary by location; details w