Zillow Group’s layoffs will eliminate 91 jobs in Washington state, landing heavily on senior staff, according to a notice the company filed with the state Employment Security Department.
The filing under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act is the first detailed accounting of who was affected by the more than 500 layoffs the company announced Tuesday. The cuts hit about 7% of its global workforce, which stood at 7,058 as of March 31.
Zillow Group is officially headquartered in Seattle, but the relatively small share of the layoffs in its home state (18%) reflects how distributed it has become. The company adopted a remote-first model it calls “Cloud HQ” in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, and it has continued to bet on remote work as other tech companies pulled employees back to the office.
The list of affected job titles in Washington state is dominated by senior positions. It includes five directors and three senior directors, 14 principal-level roles, and a long list of senior managers and senior individual contributors. Relatively few junior positions appear on the list.
Product and engineering absorbed the most. Senior Product Manager is the single largest line at seven positions, followed by Senior Software Development Engineer, Software Development Engineer and Senior UX Researcher at four each. Together, product and engineering roles account for more than a third of the Washington cuts.
The list also includes AI and machine learning positions: a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, a Senior Manager of Machine Learning Engineering, a Senior Applied Scientist, a Senior Manager of Research Science, and an Annotation Lead, associated with labeling data to train AI models.
Zillow told GeekWire on Tuesday that AI did not drive the layoffs. “Today’s changes are about better positioning Zillow for the path ahead, which includes having the right people in the right roles and being able to move faster,” a company spokesperson said.
The WARN notice adds a detail Zillow did not mention publicly: “Some of these terminations are the result of, or are expected to result in, the relocation or contracting out of operations and/or employee positions.”
Affected employees were notified Aug. 4 and will be terminated effective Oct. 5, more than 60 days later as required under state and federal law. They will continue to receive pay and benefits until then, according to the filing. Employees who are offered and accept another role at the company before that date will not be terminated.
The cuts affect workers at Zillow Group’s headquarters at 1301 Second Ave. in downtown Seattle and employees working from home elsewhere in Washington. The company said in the filing that its headquarters will remain open. None of the affected employees are represented by a union.
Zillow Group reports second-quarter earnings Wednesday afternoon.
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