Staff Data Engineer

Zendesk is a company that powers billions of customer service conversations and focuses on providing software to improve customer experience. The role is part of the Product Analytics team and involves shaping the data foundation for product decision-making at scale.

• 8+ years of experience in data engineering or analytics engineering, with demonstrated ownership of large-scale data systems
• Deep expertise in SQL and data modeling for analytics, including designing reusable, well-structured datasets
• Strong experience with modern data stack tools such as dbt, Airflow, and Snowflake (or equivalent)
• Proven ability to design systems that balance scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency in cloud environments
• Experience implementing data quality, testing, and observability frameworks
• Strong system design skills and the ability to make thoughtful architectural tradeoffs
• Track record of influencing technical direction across teams, not just delivering within a single team
• Experience mentoring engineers and raising the overall technical bar
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to work effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Own and evolve the product analytics data architecture, including data models, semantic layers, and core datasets used across multiple teams
• Define and drive standards for data modeling, metric definitions, data quality, and pipeline design across the organization
• Translate ambiguous product and business problems into scalable, well-designed data solutions
• Design and build reliable, observable data pipelines and systems that support both real-time and batch analytics use cases
• Lead cross-team initiatives to standardize schemas, align definitions, and reduce fragmentation in product data
• Drive improvements in performance, scalability, and cost efficiency across the data platform
• Establish best practices for data testing, monitoring, and SLAs, ensuring high trust in data systems
• Provide technical leadership through mentorship, design reviews, and influencing engineering direction beyond your immediate team
• Partner with product and engineering leadership to identify where data can unlock new product capabilities or insights
• Use AI-assisted tools to accelerate development (e.g., SQL generation, pipeline development, debugging, and documentation)
• Apply strong data engineering judgment to validate, optimize, and productionize AI-assisted outputs
• Identify opportunities to incorporate AI solutions into data workflows, data products, and analytics capabilities

• This role requires attendance at the local office part of the week (hybrid work model)
• 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 committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion
• Reasonable accommodations are available for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans upon request