Senior Applied Scientist, Applied Reasoning

About the teamThe Agentic AI team at Zillow is at the forefront of transforming the real estate industry by helping millions of people use AI technologies to move into their next home. Our mission is to redefine the home shopping and transaction experience through an always-on assistant that integrates deep panoptic understanding, domain expertise, and sophisticated reasoning. This lean, cross-functional team of applied scientists and engineers is committed to delivering innovative solutions through collaboration, accountability, and transparency.
Within Agentic AI, the Applied Reasoning team focuses on building the LLM reasoning and orchestration capabilities that power Zillow’s AI Copilot. Our goal is to enable the Copilot to think and act like the best-performing real estate professionals. Our work includes
Fine-tuning LLMs to support long-term goal-oriented customer journeys—from home search to mortgage approval
Infusing AI agents with high EQ by learning from top real-estate professionals, delivering emotionally intelligent support across all touchpoints
Developing orchestration frameworks that allow AI agents to autonomously fulfill personalized tasks and respond contextually throughout the user journey

About the role

Zillow is looking for a Senior Applied Scientist on the Applied Reasoning team within the Agentic AI organization to research and develop advanced LLM Reasoning Engine specialized in the real estate domain. In this role, you'll take a hands-on approach to prototyping, evaluating, and deploying reasoning models and AI Agent applications on Zillow’s scalable infrastructure. Your work will involve developing capabilities in language understanding, deep reasoning, fine-tuning, and reinforcement learning to adapt the decision-making of AI Agents to the real-estate domain.

As a Senior Applied Scientist in the Agentic AI team, you will: 

• Design, prototype, and build advanced agentic systems capable of highly autonomous, context-aware, and adaptive interactions across diverse real estate use cases

• Apply reinforcement learning and fine-tuning techniques to develop agents that can reason, collaborate, compete, or negotiate in dynamic, goal-driven environments to fulfill user needs.

• Define and refine evaluation and experimentation processes for LLM-driven applications using offline metrics, human-in-the-loop assessments, and A/B testing to balance rapid innovation with reliability and responsible deployment

• Stay at the forefront of agentic AI research and innovation, bringing emerging techniques into practical application to shape product direction.

• Contribute to the broader scientific community through publications, conference presentations, and internal knowledge sharing

• Mentor and guide junior scientists and engineers, promoting best practices in applied research, scalable agentic architecture, and responsible AI development.

This role has been categorized as a Remote position. “Remote” employees do not have a permanent corporate office workplace and, instead, work from a physical location of their choice, which must be identified to the Company. U.S. employees may live in any of the 50 United States, with limited exceptions.

In California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Washington state, and Washington DC the standard base pay range for this role is $158,200.00 - $252,800.00 Annually. This base pay range is specific to California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Washington state, and Washington DC and may not be applicable to other locations.

In addition to a competitive base salary this position is also eligible for equity awards based on factors such as experience, performance and location. Actual amounts will vary depending on experience, performance and location.

Who you are

As a Senior Applied Scientist, you are a hands-on researcher who combines scientific rigor with practical engineering to deliver real-world impact at scale. You thrive in solving complex problems and turning advanced research into robust, production-ready solutions. We are looking for someone who has:

• A Ph.D. or equivalent experience in Computer Science or a related field, with a focus on reinforcement learning, AI planning, or natural language processing

• 4+ years of experience in building large-scale, high-impact ML solutions, particularly in areas such as NLP, agent-based systems, or multi-agent collaboration or similar paradigms

• Experience in developing and working with LLM reasoning models or AI agents capable of multi-step reasoning and context-rich decision-making

• Experience with reinforcement learning and LLM fine-tuning

• Track record of publishing high-impact research in top AI/ML venues

Qualifications

• A Ph.D. or equivalent experience in Computer Science or a related field, with a focus on reinforcement learning or natural language processing

• 4+ years of experience in building large-scale, high-impact ML solutions

• 1+ years of hands-on experience with LLM-based systems or AI agents involving multi-step reasoning or complex decision-making

• Experience working in cross-functional teams, translating research into production in partnership with engineering and product teams

• Experience with reinforcement learning and LLM fine-tuning

• Strong programming skills in Python and experience with frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, LangChain, and LangGraph

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building agentic systems capable of autonomous behavior, collaboration, or negotiation

• Deep knowledge set in the areas of generative AI, including multimodal foundation models, diffusion models, transformers, reinforcement learning, preference learning, etc

• Track record of publications in top-tier ML/AI conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, AAAI)

• Experience with implementing safety guardrails and responsible AI practices

Transferable Skills

Here at Zillow - we value the experience and perspective of candidates with non-traditional backgrounds. We encourage you to apply if you have transferable skills or related experiences. 

Get to know us

Zillow is reimagining real estate to make home a reality for more and more people.

As the most-visited real estate website in the United States, Zillow® and its affiliates help movers find and win their home through digital solutions, first class partners, and easier buying, selling, financing and renting experiences. Millions of people visit Zillow Group sites every month to start their home search, and now they can rely on Zillow to help make it easier to move. The work we do helps people get home and no matter what job you're in, you will play a critical role in making home a reality for more and more people.

Our efforts to streamline the real estate transaction are supported by a deep-rooted culture of innovation, our passion to redefine the employee experience, a fundamental commitment to Equity and Belonging, and world-class benefits. These benefits include comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life, and disability coverages as well as parental leave, family benefits, retirement contributions, and paid time off. We’re also setting the standard for work experiences of the future, where our employees are supported in doing their best work and living a flexible, well-balanced life. But don’t just take our word for it. Read recent reviews on Glassdoor and recent recognition from multiple organizations, including: the 100 Best Companies to Work For, Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award, Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Corporate Equity Index, and TIME 100 Most Influential Companies list.

Zillow Group is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment with the best employees. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please contact your recruiter directly.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable state and local law.

Applicants who receive job offers from Zillow Group will be asked to sign a Proprietary Rights Agreement which includes confidentiality, intellectual property assignment, customer and employee non-solicitation, and non-competition provisions. If you are contacted for a role at Zillow Group and wish to review a copy of the Proprietary Rights Agreement prior to receiving an offer, you may request a copy from your Recruiter.