Staff Data Engineer

Job Description Zendesk is seeking a Staff Data Engineer to join the Data Platform team. The team is responsible for implementing a globally distributed system that uses powerful cloud technologies spanning Amazon Web Services and Snowflake. Our goal is to help 170,000+ global businesses truly understand customer interactions at depths never thought possible until now. As a Senior Data Engineer on Foundation Analytics, you will be responsible for building many key parts of the foundation data services platform, including next‑generation reporting and analytics. Working closely with team members to craft, develop and deliver reporting products for our customers and high‑quality software projects on time.

Responsibilities

• Publish well‑written and tested code to production.
• Participate in designing and developing key features and functionality of our data platform.
• Investigate production issues and fine‑tune our data pipelines.
• Continually improve data pipelines for high efficiency, throughput and quality of data.
• Build a platform that will be the foundation for our customer‑facing reporting features, our machine learning initiatives, and internal product analytics.
• Collaborate with team members on researching and brainstorming different solutions for technical challenges.
• Solve sophisticated problems with passion and technical leadership, helping to discover solutions to sophisticated problems.
• Develop standard methodologies and mentor others to help make technical decisions on projects.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of software development / data engineering experience with 3+ years of hands‑on experience building scalable data platforms and/or reliable data pipelines.
• Experience with Snowflake and DBT.
• Java, Python, Scala (proficient in at least one).
• Strong passion for designing scalable and fault‑tolerant software systems.
• Experience with AWS or related cloud technologies.
• Experience developing and operating high‑volume, high‑availability environments.
• Working understanding of Kubernetes infrastructure and security best practices.
• Ability to work optimally in a multifaceted, occasionally interrupt‑driven environment that includes geographically spread teams and customers.
• Solid working understanding in data modeling.
• Proven track record with cloud and data‑related technologies.

Additional Qualifications

• Experience writing ETL jobs to address various data engineering challenges.
• Strong understanding of build tools and deployment tools.
• Familiarity with Kafka, Flink, Spark frameworks and validated understanding of at least one job scheduling tool: Airflow, Celery, AWS Step Functions.

Tech Stack

• Data pipelines written in Java and Python.
• Open source technologies: Spark, Flink, Hudi, Airflow.
• Runs on AWS services like EMR and Kubernetes, integrated with S3, Athena, and Glue.

The Poland annualized base salary range for this position is zł278,000.00‑zł418,000.00. The actual compensation offered will be based on job‑related capabilities, applicable experience, and other relevant factors. This position may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, or related incentives communicated during the offer stage.

Hybrid: In this role, a hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration, while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here. Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre‑employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e‑mail to peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request.