Principal Data Engineer

Zendesk is a company focused on improving Customer Experience for over 125,000 global brands. The Zendesk Analytics Prototyping (ZAP) team designs and ships datasets powering Zendesk's customer-facing analytics application and supports internal teams. The role involves setting technical direction for data assets and leading the transition to an AI-first operating model.

• 10+ years in large-scale data engineering or analytics infrastructure, with at least 3 years at principal or staff level with architectural ownership.
• Deep hands-on expertise in Snowflake including architecture, performance optimization, and advanced features.
• Production fluency with modern analytics stack: dbt, Airflow, Apache Spark, Iceberg, Terraform, GitHub Actions.
• Extensive knowledge of OLAP warehousing and data modelling techniques (Kimball, Inmon, wide-table, normalized).
• Strong architectural judgement across ETL/ELT, batch and streaming, real-time pipelines, and data access patterns.
• SQL fluency and proficiency in at least one production-grade programming language (Python preferred; Go, Java, or Scala also accepted).
• Ability to lead technical design reviews and drive alignment across multiple engineering teams.
• Proactive problem-solving skills with a bias for shipping and clarity.

• Act as the bridge between ZAP and the customer-facing analytics application team, driving architectural alignment and leading design reviews.
• Set design patterns for data ingestion, modelling, transformation, governance, and consumption with trade-offs for scale, reliability, cost, and time-to-insight.
• Build and review high-leverage pipelines and curated datasets using Snowflake, dbt, Airflow, and Terraform.
• Lead ZAP's transition into an AI-first operating model integrating data engineering and data science.
• Establish engineering best practices including schema design, performance tuning, and cost monitoring, embedded in CI and reused across pipelines.
• Mentor staff and senior engineers across data engineering and data science to grow technical depth.

Artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications in accordance with company guidelines and applicable law. Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer and complies with applicable laws regarding non-discrimination and accommodations.