---
title: 'Senior Software Engineer, CAD Interoperability at Zoo'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-software-engineer-cad-interoperability-zoo-los-angeles-california-hqxv8esxds56'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Senior Software Engineer, CAD Interoperability at Zoo

- **Company:** Zoo
- **Location:** Los Angeles California, United States / -, United States
- **Compensation:** $145k–$195k
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-07-15
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://zoo.dev/jobs/4715373005?gh_jid=4715373005

## Job description

## About Us

Zoo is building the next generation of hardware design tools redefining how hardware products are designed, developed, and built. Our platform combines a modern, cloud-native CAD environment with AI-powered engineering workflows, helping teams design, iterate, and manufacture products faster than ever before. We are headquartered in Los Angeles, CA with both a local and remote team. We were founded and incubated by Embedded Ventures in 2021.

## About You

We’re looking for curious, innovative, and ambitious self-starters to join our growing team to help us bring our mission to life. We think you’ll thrive on our team if you’re:

- Curious at your core, with an eagerness to learn and do things differently
- Customer-focused, always thinking about ways to improve the user experience
- Able to operate autonomously and work asynchronously, while also being an effective team player

## About The Role

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer, CAD Interoperability, who can help build the systems that convert native and proprietary CAD formats into Zoo's KCL, our new programming language for 3D design. You'll work at the intersection of CAD data extraction, geometry processing, and code generation, turning models from third-party CAD systems into structured KCL representations. This role is for someone who enjoys digging into complex CAD systems, working with CAD SDKs and APIs, and building robust import pipelines that preserve model structure and design intent as much as possible.

## What You’ll Do

- Design, implement, and maintain import pipelines that convert native and proprietary CAD formats into Zoo's KCL.
- Build systems for extracting feature information from CAD files and applications, including sketches, dimensions, constraints, parameters, feature trees, assemblies, metadata, PMI, and related design intent.
- Develop extractors using native CAD application APIs and toolkits where interoperability SDKs are insufficient.
- Translate extracted CAD structure, geometry, parameters, and feature information into KCL that faithfully represents the original model.
- Build validation, testing, and comparison tools to measure conversion quality across geometry, topology, feature information, assemblies, and generated KCL output.
- Handle edge cases across proprietary formats, CAD versions, modeling kernels, malformed files, incomplete metadata, and inconsistent vendor API behavior.
- Collaborate with the file format, modeling, and product teams to improve Zoo's CAD import experience and expand support for real-world customer files.

## What You’ll Need

- B.S. in Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- Strong professional experience in software engineering, ideally involving CAD, geometry, file formats, code generation, or data extraction systems.
- Experience working with complex technical data formats, application APIs, SDKs, or translation pipelines.
- Proficiency in a systems programming language such as Rust or C++, with comfort working across language boundaries and vendor SDKs.
- Experience building automated tests, validation tools, and debugging workflows for complex technical systems.
- Ability to work autonomously, investigate unfamiliar systems, and make pragmatic technical decisions in a fast-moving environment.

## Nice to Have

- Strong understanding of CAD model structure, including parts, assemblies, sketches, constraints, dimensions, features, parameters, B-rep geometry, and tessellated representations.
- Experience with CAD interoperability SDKs such as HOOPS Exchange, CoreTechnologie 3D_Kernel_IO, Open Design Alliance, CAD Exchanger, Datakit, or similar tools.
- Experience with native CAD APIs such as SOLIDWORKS API, Creo TOOLKIT, NX Open, CATIA CAA/API, Inventor API, or similar.
- Experience with STEP, IGES, Parasolid, ACIS, JT, glTF, STL, or other CAD and 3D exchange formats.
- Experience generating structured source code from model data, especially for DSLs or domain-specific modeling languages.
- Familiarity with KCL or other programmatic CAD workflows.

The salary range for this role is provided below. The final offer will depend on multiple factors including candidate experience, skills, expertise, and market data. Compensation may vary by geography. In addition to salary, we offer competitive equity as well as a full benefits package which may vary by geography as well.

Salary Range $145,000—$195,000 USD

Zoo is an equal-opportunity employer committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. The Zoo team is made up of incredibly talented and unique individuals from across the globe. All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, Veteran status, age, or any other trait that unfairly targets a group of people. We encourage everyone interested in our mission to apply!

## About Zoo

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Zoo develops modern, AI-native CAD software for hardware design, including a full-featured platform enhanced with a conversational design agent.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed Stage)
- **Headquarters**: Inglewood, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Jessie Frazelle (Co-Founder & CEO), Jordan Noone (Co-Founder & Executive Chairman), Jenna Bryant (Co-Founder & Investor)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Software Development / Computer-Aided Design (CAD) / Hardware Design
- **Target Customers**: Hardware engineers, product designers, and manufacturing teams (B2B, Enterprise)
- **Mission**: To empower the hardware design industry with better, modern tools and build the tools the founders wish they had, transforming how physical products are conceived and developed.

## Products & Services
- **Zoo Design Studio**: The flagship product—a full-stack, AI-native CAD platform. It serves as the central hub for hardware design, combining traditional point-and-click modeling, a coding interface, and AI-driven design capabilities. Built on Zoo's proprietary, GPU-based, cloud-implemented geometry engine.
- **Zookeeper**: A conversational CAD agent integrated into Zoo Design Studio. It captures design intent through natural language prompts, researches and reasons through design problems, plans constraints, and generates fully editable, manufacturing-aware CAD models.
- **Text-to-CAD**: An ML-enhanced tool that allows users to generate CAD models from text descriptions.
- **Enterprise CAD APIs**: A suite of APIs for developers to integrate Zoo's geometry engine and capabilities into their own workflows.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available
- **Total Funding**: $5.0M (Seed Round led by Venrex, October 2023)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Venrex (lead investor), Embedded Ventures, and 11 other investors across multiple rounds. Key talent sources include Oxide Computer Company, Scale AI, Pixar Animation Studios, Cloudflare, and Arm.
- **Growth Signals**: 
    - **Headcount**: 45 employees, with a **95.3% year-over-year growth** rate.
    - **Global Reach**: Operates in 13 countries (US, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Poland, India, UK, and more).
    - **Security Milestones**: Achieved SOC 2 Type II audit and ITAR compliance; recently completed a security audit by Trail of Bits (June 2026).
    - **Product Velocity**: Launched Zookeeper, redesigned sketch mode, and continues to release blog posts and updates frequently.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Proprietary Geometry Engine**: The first CAD engine to be GPU-based, cloud-implemented, API-accessible, and dynamically scalable. This acts as a digital bridge between hardware development and machine learning, creating a significant technical moat.
- **Conversational CAD (Zookeeper)**: A first-of-its-kind agent that reasons and designs around user intent, moving beyond simple automation to true AI-assisted design.
- **Hybrid Workflow**: Uniquely allows users to seamlessly switch between point-and-click, code, and conversational AI within a single environment, catering to different engineering preferences.
- **Enterprise-Grade Security**: ITAR-compliant and SOC 2 Type II certified, making it viable for defense and aerospace customers.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI-First Design**: Deepening the integration of AI (Zookeeper) to automate research, reasoning, and constraint generation, moving CAD from a drafting tool to a collaborative design partner.
- **Ecosystem Expansion**: Building out the broader CAD ecosystem with APIs and developer tools to become the standard platform for hardware design.
- **Performance & Scale**: Continuing to leverage its cloud-native, GPU-accelerated engine to handle complex, large-scale designs that traditional CAD tools struggle with.
- **Talent Acquisition**: Actively hiring senior engineers (Graphics, Cloud, Frontend, Language Development) to accelerate product development and scale the platform.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-Driven**: The opportunity to fundamentally reshape the $10B+ CAD industry and solve the "boring" problems that have plagued hardware engineers for decades.
- **High Autonomy & Ownership**: Culture emphasizes operating with a high degree of autonomy and ownership, with a flat structure and a "solutions-oriented" mindset.
- **Technically Curious Team**: The company values continuous learning and innovation. The team includes talent from Pixar, Cloudflare, and SpaceX-level startups, creating a high-caliber peer group.
- **Global & Flexible**: Headquartered in Inglewood, CA, with a globally distributed team. Roles are listed as "In-Office or Remote," offering flexibility.
- **Transparency**: The company values radical transparency, even making its full SOC 2 report publicly available without friction.

## Sources
1. [zoo.dev](https://zoo.dev/)
2. [zoo.dev/careers](https://zoo.dev/careers)
3. [linkedin.com/company/zoodotdev](https://www.linkedin.com/company/zoodotdev)
4. [builtin.com/company/zoo-zoodev](https://builtin.com/company/zoo-zoodev)
5. [builtin.com/company/zoo-zoodev/jobs](https://builtin.com/company/zoo-zoodev/jobs)

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