Senior Data Engineer

Job Description
*Who we're looking for:*
The 'Zendesk Analytics Prototyping' (ZAP) team is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to support our mission of building a robust data foundation for CRM insights and improving customer support tools. As a Senior Data Engineer, you will work on designing and implementing scalable, high-quality data solutions, collaborating closely with engineering and analytics teams to enhance Zendesk's operations. This role offers the opportunity to grow your skills in a dynamic environment and make a measurable impact on how Zendesk leverages data.

What You'll Be Doing

• Collaborate with team members to define requirements and translate them into scalable data models and pipelines.
• Develop and maintain ELT pipelines, ensuring data reliability and scalability for business reporting and analytics use cases.
• Build and optimize SQL-based data models using dbt and other ETL tools.
• Identify and implement improvements in data delivery, processing performance, and system efficiency.
• Contribute to the team's technical vision and bring innovative solutions to enhance data systems.

*What you bring to the role
Basic Qualifications*

• 5+ years of data engineering experience building, maintaining and working with data pipelines & ETL processes in big data environments.
• Extensive experience with SQL, ideally in the context of data modeling and analysis.
• Hands-on production experience with dbt, and proven knowledge in modern and classic Data Modeling - Kimball, Inmon, etc.
• Programming skills in Python or a similar language, with an emphasis on data transformation and automation.
• Experience with cloud columnar databases (Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, Snowflake), query authoring (SQL) as well as working familiarity with a variety of databases.
• Proven experience in performance testing, capacity planning, and cost optimization for large-scale, complex data pipelines and systems. This includes identifying bottlenecks, ensuring scalability, and minimizing operational costs in cloud-based data environments.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• SnowPro Core certification or equivalent hands-on expertise.
• Familiarity with Lean/6 Sigma principles and an understanding of CRM analytics.

Our Data Stack
ELT (Snowflake, dbt, Airflow, Kafka)

BI (Tableau, Looker)

Infrastructure (AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, GitHub Actions)

Hybrid: In this role, our 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. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

The Intelligent Heart Of Customer Experience
Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we're proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & 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 with your specific accommodation request.