Senior Backend Engineer, MCP

About Zapier and AI Automation

At Zapier, we leverage automation daily to enhance work efficiency, creativity, and humanity. We encourage the responsible and transparent use of AI tools throughout our hiring process, providing specific guidance on how to collaborate with AI during Zapier's hiring process.

Zapier is a leader in AI automation, empowering businesses to boost productivity and customer service through a vast platform of integrations, robust workflow automations, and practical AI applications. The External Platform Zone is building the crucial infrastructure for the next generation of automation, centered around the Model Context Protocol (MCP). MCP is an open standard designed to enable AI agents to seamlessly reason, act, and orchestrate workflows across Zapier’s extensive ecosystem of over 8,000 integrations.

The Opportunity: Senior Backend Engineer, MCP

We are seeking a Senior Backend Engineer, MCP to design and scale the foundational systems driving this vision. In this pivotal role, you will own APIs, build core platform primitives, and collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to define how AI agents interact with the real world via Zapier. If you are passionate about foundational systems, architectural design, protocol thinking, and shaping the future of AI agent workflows, this is the perfect opportunity for you.

Key Responsibilities

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

High Visibility, High Impact

MCP represents one of Zapier's most strategically important initiatives, foundational to our AI roadmap and central to our presence in the broader AI ecosystem.

This role offers a unique opportunity to:

• Define how AI agents interact with third-party systems through Zapier.
• Shape a novel protocol impacting internal platform teams and external developers alike.
• Work on high-trust, cross-functional projects with direct executive-level visibility.
• Influence the long-term architecture of Zapier’s most ambitious product experiences.
• Join a fast-moving, experimental team that highly values curiosity, clarity, and velocity.

About You

We are looking for backend engineers who possess:

• Seasoned Backend Builder: 6+ years of experience in designing, developing, and maintaining complex production systems. Proficient in writing backend services (Python or Node.js preferred) and skilled in API design, database modeling, and CI/CD pipelines.
• AI Tooling Understanding: Ability to leverage AI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor) for personal development acceleration and excitement about building systems that enable others to use AI effectively. Experience with Model Context Protocol or agent frameworks is highly valued.
• Platform Thinking: Demonstrated experience building or contributing to platform products, emphasizing extensibility, comprehensive documentation, and robust foundational design. The ability to simplify complex concepts for users.
• Customer Empathy and Curiosity: A continuous drive to seek context, ask insightful questions, and maintain a broad perspective to address customer needs and solve critical problems.
• Bias Toward Action: A proactive approach, especially in ambiguous situations, creating structure, clarity, and momentum. Pragmatic in shipping fast and iterating, while also knowing when to focus on details.
• Ownership Mindset: Takes initiative independently, communicates effectively, and possesses sound judgment to balance user needs, technical constraints, and product goals.
• Self-Starter with Ambiguity Comfort: Capable of transforming loosely defined problems into concrete actions, delivering on commitments, and proactively surfacing blockers to seek solutions.

Important Information

This is an all-remote company, but geographical considerations apply. Please review Zapier's list of countries where permanent remote work is not currently available.

Key skills/competency

• Backend Engineering
• API Design
• System Architecture
• Scalability
• Distributed Systems
• Python
• Node.js
• AI Agents
• Model Context Protocol (MCP)
• Workflow Automation