Escalation Engineer

About this role

IMPORTANT: Please be aware, scammers may try to impersonate Zello by reaching out regarding job opportunities. We will never ask you for bank account information, checks, or other sensitive information as part of our hiring process. All correspondence will come from the zello.com email domain. If you’re unsure, please email recruiting@zello.com with questions.

ABOUT ZELLO

Zello is a voice-first communication platform, powered by our industry-leading push-to-talk technology, to improve collaboration and productivity for desk-less workers. With over 175+ million users, we’re the #1 rated push-to-talk app in the world, delivering 9 billion (yes, with a B) messages a month. 

At Zello, our company values are at the heart of what we do everyday. We’re proud to serve the frontline, we’re privileged to connect people in times of crisis across the globe, and we’re honored to support first responders.

And this is where you come in.

As that base grows and the platform deepens, we need an Escalation Engineer who can own the hardest technical problems our customers hit, drive them to root cause with minimal Engineering involvement, and build the tooling and runbooks that make the whole support organization faster. You will report to the Product Advocate Manager and work shoulder to shoulder with Engineering, Product, and Customer Success.

After a successful first year, you will have

- Owned every Tier-1 enterprise escalation that reached you, each closed with a reproducible, engineering-ready root-cause analysis.

- Read into code and mobile SDK internals to isolate defects yourself, and drafted the fix where scope allowed, instead of routing every code-level question to Engineering.

- Built or meaningfully expanded the diagnostic runbook and tooling library, cutting average escalation-to-resolution time by a measurable margin.

- Established an escalation triage process between Support and Engineering that both teams trust and use.

- Mentored L1 and L2 engineers into handling scenarios that used to route straight to you.

What you'll do

- Own the most complex technical escalations from L2: multi-system integration failures, network-level anomalies, SDK defects, and enterprise deployment edge cases, driving each to full resolution.

- Read code and mobile SDK internals (Android/iOS) to isolate root cause, and write or propose the fix where scope allows, rather than handing every code-level question to Engineering.

- Serve as the primary technical liaison to Engineering: write precise, reproducible bug reports, lead escalation triage, and close the loop until each issue is resolved or deprioritized with clear rationale.

- Build and maintain diagnostic tooling, automation scripts, and runbooks that cut repeat escalations across the support org.

- Lead technical onboarding and implementation reviews for strategic enterprise accounts: MDM, SSO/SAML, custom API integrations, and on-premise server deployments.

- Support enterprise developers integrating Zello SDKs and APIs toward robust, production-ready implementations.

- Identify systemic patterns in support data (recurring bugs, configuration gaps, documentation holes) and bring structured proposals to Product and Engineering.

- Define and continuously improve escalation protocols, support processes, and knowledge-base standards.

Who you are

- You have written and shipped production software in a paid engineering role. You can read a codebase, reason about it, and make or propose a change. A CS degree on its own is not what we mean here; we mean real, shipped code.

- You have 6+ years in technical support, solutions engineering, or a closely related role at a SaaS or communications-technology company.

- You have resolved ambiguous, high-pressure enterprise issues end to end, and you can walk through exactly how you isolated each one with specific examples.

- You understand APIs, networking fundamentals, and mobile platforms (Android/iOS) deeply enough to read a packet capture, crash log, or SDK trace and know where to look next.

- You automate repetitive diagnostics by default. You have built lightweight tooling or scripts rather than waiting for Engineering, and you can point to a concrete example and the time it saved.

- You have found a recurring problem, built a runbook or tool around it, and measured the improvement.

- You translate technical findings cleanly for engineers, customers, and non-technical stakeholders, and you back your claims with specifics rather than generalities.

- You want this senior individual-contributor problem-solving seat. You are energized by owning the hardest technical work itself, not by using it as a step toward management or account management.

This Role Is Not

- An engineering role with sprint commitments, but you will read and write code at a diagnostic and automation level. Code is a core requirement here, not a nice-to-have.

- A pure ticket-queue role. A significant part of your time goes to building systems, runbooks, and tooling, not just clearing escalations.

- A customer success role. Renewals, upsell, and relationship health sit with CS. You bring technical depth and resolution quality.

- A management role. There are no direct reports today, though you will mentor L1 and L2 engineers and informally lead cross-functional escalation workflows.

We hire for potential, passion for our mission, and a knack for solving difficult problems over checking every qualification box. We have competitive pay, equity with significant upside, and intentionally design our benefits to encourage healthy and well-balanced employees, flexible schedules and time off. We even offer a sabbatical after every five years of service so you’re able to pursue and enjoy what matters most to you. And of course, we wouldn’t be a technology company without a ping-pong table and free snacks in our break room. Join us!

Zello provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and

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