Staff Software Engineer (Ruby)

Zendesk is a company focused on improving Customer Experience, serving over 145,000 global brands. The role is part of the Ruby infrastructure team responsible for maintaining Ruby and Rails systems, reducing infrastructure costs, enhancing performance, improving developer experience, and contributing to open source projects. The team impacts multiple projects and services across Zendesk. The company has offices in Krakow, Poland and Lisbon, Portugal, and offers a hybrid work model.

Basic Qualifications:

• 6+ years developing server-side applications in Ruby or similar backend languages.
• Ability to build and operate distributed systems at scale.
• Expertise in relational databases such as MySQL and Postgres.
• Experience provisioning and deploying services with cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure).
• Understanding of architecture and software design patterns for server-side and web domains.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Open, thoughtful, and empathetic work approach.
• Desire to continually learn and share technical skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Significant experience developing web applications in Ruby.
• Experience working in C.
• Proficiency with AWS.
• Experience in performance testing, capacity planning, and cost optimization for large-scale data pipelines and systems.
• Contributor to or maintainer of open source projects.

• Help maintain Zendesk’s core monolith Rails applications that serve billions of requests per day.
• Keep enterprise Ruby systems up to date.
• Contribute to open source projects.
• Collaborate in evolving workflows and processes with team members.
• Modernize legacy systems.
• Identify and implement standardized practices to improve productivity across teams.
• Support deployed services to ensure high stability and reliability.
• Mentor junior team members and collaborate with experienced colleagues.

• Hybrid work model requiring attendance at local office part of the week; specific schedule determined by hiring manager.
• Artificial intelligence or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications.
• Equal opportunity employer with commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• Reasonable accommodations available for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans.