Software Engineer II
Local Measure
Job Description
Who We're Looking For:
Zendesk is seeking a skilled and highly motivated Software Engineer to serve as the primary technical escalation point for our business-critical applications and platforms.
This specialized role is critical for the success of our new Central IT Operations Organization. You will embed with the IT Operations team to retain deep application expertise while executing standardized Incident, Problem, Change and Observability processes defined by the central operations body and inline with Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practices. Your primary goals are to minimize service disruption and impact, optimize resolution processes and reduce resolution time, and drive the root cause elimination of complex, recurring system defects.
Responsibilities:
Operational Excellence & Incident Response (Sustaining Work)
L3 Incident Response & SME Escalation: Serve as the primary technical authority and escalation point for business-critical application outages. Own the end-to-end remediation of complex incidents involving AWS Cloud Infrastructure, Workato, and deep integrations with Zuora, NetSuite, and Salesforce CPQ.
Deep-Dive Technical Troubleshooting: Perform advanced forensic analysis to resolve application defects. This includes tracing distributed API calls across middleware, performing complex SQL queries to validate data integrity, and analyzing multi-layered application logs to identify bottlenecks or failures.
On-Call Reliability: Participate in a structured 24/7 on-call rotation, ensuring that high-priority incidents are met with immediate technical expertise in accordance with established Service Level Objectives (SLOs).
Problem Management & Defect Elimination: Lead Root Cause Analysis (RCA) process for major or recurring incidents. Beyond documentation, you will partner with Core Engineering to translate RCA findings into prioritized backlog items, ensuring permanent code or architectural fixes are implemented to "kill" recurring issues.
Change Governance & Release Support: Act as the gatekeeper for production stability by executing complex application configurations and administration tasks. Ensure all changes adhere to centralized Change Management policies, risk scoring, and approved maintenance windows to minimize unintended service impact.
Operational Health Monitoring: Proactively monitor application health trends to identify "smoke" before it becomes a "fire," ensuring the platform remains performant and scalable as business logic evolves.
Standardization, Knowledge & Observability
Runbook & Knowledge Creation: Serve as the knowledge authority for your domain. Create and guide creation, curate, and maintain high-quality Runbooks, and Knowledge Articles to streamline and increase first-contact resolution.
Operational Readiness: Partner with the central Observability Engineer to implement and refine observability and monitoring standards for your domain applications. Assist in alert tuning to influence alert noise reduction deliverables.
Work Transition: Identify and document repetitive administrative and user support tasks that can be automated or shifted to the Ops org.
Application Administration: Execute and document complex application administration tasks, such as permissioning, system configuration, user troubleshooting, and security upgrades. Centralize resolution and guidance to resolve technical issues that plague the entire organization.
Collaboration & Continuous Improvement
Service Level Management: Monitor and report on application performance against established SLAs/SLOs (e.g., Critical application availability target of 99.9%).
Collaboration & Communication: Work closely with the core engineering team to ensure a seamless flow from incident to resolution and prevention.
Retrospectives & Process Adherence: Participate in post-incident reviews (PIRs) and contribute to the continuous refinement of centralized policies and workflows.
Qualifications:
Experience & Domain Expertise
Experience: 3+ years in a high-stakes Application Support Engineering, SRE, Systems Engineering role, specifically supporting production-grade environments.
SaaS Ecosystem Mastery: Proven track record of administering and troubleshooting enterprise-scale SaaS platforms. Functional and technical knowledge of one or more core systems (e.g., Salesforce/CPQ, Zuora, NetSuite, or Workday).
Incident Leadership: Direct experience operating within an ITIL-based framework, with a demonstrated ability to lead Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and manage high-pressure P1/P2 incident restoration.
Technical Skills
Advanced Troubleshooting: Expert-level ability to diagnose application defects by tracing distributed API calls, analyzing complex system logs, and identifying failures within middleware (e.g., Workato/MuleSoft).
Observability & Telemetry: Hands-on experience with observability platforms (e.g., Datadog, New Relic, or Splunk). Ability to build dashboards and interpret "The Four Golden Signals" (Latency, Traffic, Errors, and Saturation) to drive proactive system health.
Data Proficiency: Strong SQL skills for data mining, integrity validation, and identifying anomalies within relational databases or application data layers.
Cloud Fundamentals: Functional understanding of AWS infrastructure (EC2, Lambda, CloudWatch, S3) and how infrastructure-level events impact application performance.
Preferred Skills & Growth Areas
Automation & Scripting: Proficiency in Python, Bash, or JavaScript to automate repetitive operational tasks ("toil") or build custom diagnostic tooling.
CI/CD & DevOps: Familiarity with modern deployment pipelines (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or Spinnaker) and the ability to interpret deployment logs to identify failed releases.
Technical Documentation: Proven ability to author high-quality Runbooks and Knowledge Base articles (Confluence/Wiki) that empower Tier 1/2 teams to resolve issues faster.
Systems Architecture: A conceptual understanding of microservices, webhooks, and ETL/ELT patterns, enabling you to identify points of failure in complex, integrated ecosystems.
Please note that Zendesk can only hire candidates who are physically located and plan to work from Karnataka or Maharashtra. Please refer to the location posted on the requisition for where this role is based.
Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.
The intelligent heart of customer experience
Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.
Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.
As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.
Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.
Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request.
