[Hiring] Incident Manager @Zillow

Role Description

Zillow Group is seeking an Incident Manager (IC) to support the reliability and operational excellence of our production systems. This role coordinates incident response to minimize customer impact and improve system resilience through structured execution and clear communication.

At this level, success in this role is anchored in three core areas:

• Operational Execution: independently driving incidents to resolution through structured process and sound judgment.
• Communication: delivering timely, accurate updates to diverse stakeholders.
• Information Synthesis: gathering, connecting, and applying data to drive RCA and continuous improvement.

Responsibilities

• Operational Execution:
  • Lead non-trivial production incidents from detection through mitigation.
  • Facilitate incident calls, defining clear ownership, priorities, and next steps.
  • Execute established incident management workflows, runbooks, and escalation paths.
  • Coordinate cross-functional teams for timely resolution and minimal customer impact.
  • Maintain accurate, real-time documentation of incident timelines and actions.
• Communication:
  • Deliver clear and concise updates to all technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Ensure stakeholder alignment on status, risks, and next steps.
  • Document incident summaries and contribute to post-incident reporting.
  • Proactively escalate risks and communication gaps early.
• Information Synthesis & Continuous Improvement:
  • Support Root Cause Analysis (RCA) by gathering data and documenting contributing factors.
  • Identify trends, gaps, and opportunities for improving incident workflows.
  • Contribute to retrospectives and track follow-up actions to completion.
  • Apply lessons learned to enhance future incident response.
• Coordination & Collaboration:
  • Partner with Engineering, Product, and Support teams during incident response.
  • Support Senior Incident Managers on high-severity or complex incidents.
  • Facilitate collaboration and maintain alignment across stakeholders.
• Operational Excellence:
  • Maintain a high standard of reliability and responsiveness in on-call rotations.
  • Reinforce structured incident management practices.
  • Contribute to the improvement of runbooks, tooling, and team processes.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in incident management, SRE, or technical operations (or 3 years with a Master's degree, or equivalent work experience).
• Proven experience coordinating responses to production incidents or operational events.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, able to tailor updates for diverse audiences.
• Demonstrated sound judgment and prioritization in high-pressure or ambiguous situations.
• Familiarity with structured incident management processes (triage, escalation, post-incident review) and RCA practices.
• Comfortable collaborating with cross-functional teams (Engineering, Product, Support).
• Demonstrates ownership, reliability, and accountability in operational responsibilities.

Requirements

• Experience with incident management/on-call tooling (e.g., Rootly, PagerDuty, ServiceNow).
• Exposure to distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, or large-scale applications.

Benefits

• Competitive base salary.
• Eligible for equity awards based on factors such as experience, performance, and location.
• Employees in this role will not be paid below the salary threshold for exempt employees in the state where they reside.