Incident Manager

Zillow is strengthening how it manages and learns from production incidents, with greater focus on operational discipline, actionable data, improved tooling, and preventing repeat issues. The role sits at the intersection of technology, operations, and communication. You will independently manage small- to mid-scale incidents while supporting senior incident managers during complex, high-severity events. The incident management practice is evolving. You will help improve processes, runbooks, tooling, root-cause analysis, and follow-through—not simply respond to incidents.

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; and Information Synthesis: gathering, connecting, and applying data to drive RCA and continuous improvement.

Responsibilities

• 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

• 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 escalated risks and communication gaps early

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Owns end-to-end execution of small to mid-scale incidents
• Contributes to larger, high‑severity incidents with guidance
• Influences improvements within team-level processes and workflows
• Builds foundational skills in incident management, communication, and decision‑making

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, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Washington state, and Washington DC the standard base pay range for this role is $ - $ annually.

This base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations. In Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia the standard base pay range for…