Staff Platform Engineer, AI Enablement

Your Impact on Our Mission

At Zocdoc, we're on a mission to give power to the patient — and that starts with enabling every person at Zocdoc to build, ship, and leverage technology safely, confidently, and with leverage.

As a Staff Platform Engineer focused on AI Enablement, you will design, build, and evolve the foundational systems, tooling, guardrails, and paved roads that create leverage across our engineering organization and beyond — accelerating delivery while improving reliability, consistency, and developer experience. Critically, this role has a wider aperture than most platform roles: you will own AI enablement for technical stakeholders, building opinionated platforms and safe onramps that allow every builder at Zocdoc — regardless of their engineering background — to harness AI tools productively and securely.

This role sits within the Infrastructure organization. You will collaborate across the business to turn platform strategy into practical, adoptable solutions — working side by side with a parallel squad focused on the technical engineering audience, and bridging the gap between engineering-grade tools and the non-technical teams (People, Operations, Sales, Finance, and others) who increasingly build and depend on AI-powered workflows.

The role emphasizes hands-on technical leadership (~80%) with meaningful input into platform direction (~20%). Your work will abstract operational complexity, define guardrails for safe AI usage, improve testability and safety, and streamline the builder journey across both software-engineering and non-engineering surfaces.

You'll Enjoy This Role If You...

• Enjoy building platforms that enable productivity, consistency, and autonomy for diverse audiences
• Enjoy learning and teaching others about leveraging AI-based technologies to achieve real-world results
• Are motivated by making other people more effective; not just shipping your own features
• Like designing cohesive developer and/or non-technical experiences that teams actually want to adopt
• Care deeply about empathy, usability, and reducing cognitive load
• Prefer solving real problems through thoughtful design, iteration, and collaboration
• Are comfortable translating complex technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders — and enjoy doing it
• Find satisfaction in building systems that scale predictably and help others succeed
• Thrive in environments with ambiguity, frequent change, and evolving prioritization — and bring clarity where there was none
• Are a natural collaborator

Your Day to Day

• Design and build platform services and solutions that are secure, scalable, and intentionally easy to use — including CI/CD pipelines, developer tooling, shared infrastructure patterns, and AI-powered developer workflows
• Contribute to the technical direction of Zocdoc's internal developer platform, including paved roads, tooling, and shared workflows for both engineering and non-engineering builders
• Build and maintain opinionated platforms and guardrails that enable non-technical teams to safely create, share, and operationalize AI tools — without introducing security vulnerabilities, access control failures, or operational bottlenecks
• Define and evolve the software development lifecycle for non-traditional builders: access controls, credential management, testing patterns, on-call/support paths, and contribution workflows
• Collaborate across teams to understand real developer pain points and non-technical stakeholder needs; validate platform bets; and drive adoption of platform capabilities across both audiences
• Own and deliver high-impact platform investments end to end — from problem framing through implementation and rollout
• Improve measurable outcomes such as build times, deployment safety, AI tool adoption rates, and operational simplicity
• Champion platform-as-product thinking by treating internal engineers and non-technical builders as first-class users — and continuously refining the experience based on their feedback
• Advance platform capabilities in AI-assisted development, helping shape how all Zocdoc builders use AI in their daily workflows with the right guardrails for safety, quality, and testability
• Work with cutting-edge generative AI tools and technology to accelerate platform development and model best practices for the broader organization
• Mentor engineers and technologists across the business and raise the bar for technical design and code quality
• Ensure platform patterns align with security, compliance, and reliability expectations without becoming a bottleneck

You'll Be Successful in This Role If You...

• Have 7+ years of experience building or evolving internal developer platforms, productivity tooling, or CI/CD systems used by multiple teams
• Have designed and operated distributed systems in AWS or similar cloud environments
• Bring strong judgment around platform abstractions and APIs — knowing when to standardize and when to stay flexible
• Can take ambiguous problems, break them into deliverable pieces, and drive them to measurable outcomes
• Communicate technical trade-offs clearly to technical audience — translating engineering concepts into terms that resonate with stakeholders outside of software development
• Treat adoption as a first-class engineering problem, not an afterthought — and know that adoption across non-technical teams requires an even higher bar of empathy and communication
• Have experience (or strong, informed opinions) building guardrails, access controls, and safe onboarding paths for non-engineers using AI tools
• Are motivated by enabling other engineers and non-technical builders to work reliably, safely, and with confidence
• Value learning, curiosity, and operational excellence — and model those qualities for the team
• Are comfortable in fast-moving, high-change environments where priorities evolve and alignment requires active investment
• Have integrated generative AI tools into daily workflows to automate tasks, foster innovation, and maximize productivity
• Hold a Bachelor's degree in CS, Math, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience)

Strategy vs. Execution Split

• ~20% Strategy and Influence (contributing to platform direction, participating in cross-team alignment, surfacing trade-offs and priorities)
• ~80% Hands-On Technical Leadership (designing and building platform capabilities, reviewing architecture and code, partnering with teams on adoption and iteration)

Benefits:

• Flexible work environment for those based in NYC (Role is open to remote)
• Unlimited Vacation
• 100% paid employee health benefit options (including medical, dental, and vision)
• 401(k) with employer funded match
• Corporate wellness program with Wellhub
• Sabbatical leave (for employees with 5+ years of service)
• Competitive paid parental leave and fertility/family planning reimbursement
• Cell phone reimbursement
• Employee Resource Groups and ZocClubs to promote shared community and belonging
• Great Place to Work Certified