Senior/Staff Software Engineer, Online Storage

About Zip

Zip is the AI platform for enterprise procurement — built for humans and agents working together. By orchestrating procurement across teams, tools, and suppliers with the help of AI agents, companies can secure the resources they need to innovate faster than ever before.The world’s most influential enterprises trust Zip, including T-Mobile, OpenAI, AMD, Mars, Dollar Tree, and more. Together they’ve saved over $8 billion and processed over $500 billion in spend. Zip’s team includes product leaders from Apple, Airbnb, and Meta, as well as former procurement leaders from United Health, Sanofi, MGM Resorts, Discover, and NASA.Backed by Adams Street, Alkeon, BOND, CRV, DST, Tiger Global, and Y Combinator, Zip has raised $371 million, most recently at a $2.2 billion valuation and has been recognized by Forbes Fintech 50, Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies, Inc. Best in Business, and LinkedIn Top Startups.

Your Role

The Online Storage team is a foundational infrastructure team within Zip's Engineering organization. We own and operate the core storage, search, and permissions infrastructure that powers everything Zip's product teams build—spanning relational databases (Aurora RDS), caching layers (Elasticache, MemoryDB), DynamoDB, S3, OpenSearch, and the permissions framework that ensures every user sees exactly the data they're authorized to see.

As a Senior/Staff Software Engineer, you will own large initiatives in both the Storage and Search domains, spearhead the fundamental re-architecture of our storage systems to support Zip's global expansion. Your technical leadership will raise the bar for the engineers around you while directly shipping work that enables Zip to serve enterprise customers across multiple continents.

You Will

• Evolve Zip's search infrastructure—including OpenSearch, search APIs, and Global Search—from a fragmented set of systems toward a unified, intelligent, and measurable search platform.

• Evolve Zip's core storage stack—Aurora RDS, Elasticache, MemoryDB, DynamoDB, and S3—to support multi-region, multi-cell architectures as Zip expands across the US and EU.

• Enhance the developer experience for database schema management by optimizing schema migration workflows .

• Improve product reliability by mitigating unexpected data quality concerns as part of the Entity Framework.

• Drive complete cell isolation: eliminate cross-cell database and search connections so that a failure in one cell cannot cascade to another.

• Mature disaster recovery posture across every stateful system, validating RTO and RPO targets through practiced fire drills rather than aspirational documentation.

• Improve the performance and debuggability of Zip's data layer, giving engineers across the org clear tooling to diagnose and resolve regressions quickly.

• Act as a technical mentor and role model for junior engineers, fostering growth and maintaining a high quality bar for all technical outcomes.

Your Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time spent on platform or infrastructure teams.

• Deep, hands-on experience with large-scale distributed storage systems—relational databases, caching layers, and cloud-managed storage (Aurora RDS, Redis/Elasticache, DynamoDB, S3, or equivalents).

• Proven experience designing or operating search infrastructure (OpenSearch, Elasticsearch, or similar) at scale, including relevance tuning, index architecture, and freshness considerations.

• Track record of delivering large, complex infrastructure projects end-to-end with high quality and clear communication to stakeholders.

• Demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership to other engineers—through design reviews, mentorship, and setting standards—whether or not you have held a formal management role.

Nice to Haves

• Experience with multi-region or multi-cell architectures and the challenges of data residency and routing.

• Familiarity with data access layer patterns (ORM, Ent/TAO, or similar) and the intersection of the access layer with underlying storage performance.

• Experience implementing or improving disaster recovery processes, including fire drills and RTO/RPO validation.

• Comfort operating across multiple time zones with distributed partner teams.

The salary range for this role is $140,000 - $260,000. The salary for this position is determined based on a variety of job-related factors that may include location, relevant experience, education, or particular skills and expertise.

Perks & Benefits

At Zip, we’re committed to providing our employees with everything they need to do their best work.

• 📈 Start-up equity

• 🦷 100% health, vision & dental coverage options

• 🍽️ Catered breakfast, lunch, & dinner

• 🌴 Flexible PTO

• 🏋️‍♀️ ClassPass membership

• 🚍 Monthly commuter benefit

• 🚠 Team building events & happy hours

• 💻 Home office stipend

• 🛜 Phone/internet reimbursement

• 🏠 Hybrid model + 5 flexible remote days per quarter

• 🍼 Paid parental leave

• 🐣 Fertility benefits

• 🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

• 🤖 Unlimited AI token usage

We're looking to hire Zipsters and that means hiring people who take ownership, communicate openly, have an underdog mindset, and are excited to increase the pace of innovation for every business in the world. We encourage all candidates to apply even if your experience doesn't exactly match up to our job description. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workspace where everyone (regardless of age, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and more) feels like they belong. We look forward to hearing from you!