We’re looking for a smart, adaptable Senior Software Engineer to help build and evolve our real-time data ingestion platform. You’ll work at the intersection of software engineering and data infrastructure, designing and maintaining scalable systems that stream high-quality, trusted data from Kafka to Snowflake via Snowpipe Streaming. This role emphasizes data quality, observability, and pipeline reliability, and involves developing robust monitoring and alerting systems. You’ll join a high-performing team, contribute to architecture decisions, and collaborate with other engineers while shaping how data flows across Zendesk’s ecosystem.
Key Responsibilities
- Design, build, and maintain data quality systems and pipelines.
- Work with tools such as Snowflake, Docker/Kubernetes, and Kafka to enable scalable, observable data movement.
- Collaborate cross-functionally to close skill gaps in DQ and data platform tooling. Contribute to building internal tooling that supports schema validation, data experimentation, and automated checks.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with data producers, analytics engineers, platform teams, and business stakeholders.
- Own the reliability, scalability, and performance of ingestion systems deployed on AWS
- Architect and build core components of our real-time ingestion platform using Kafka, Snowpipe Streaming.
- Champion software engineering excellence — including testing, observability, CI/CD, and automation
- Drive the development of platform tools that ensure data quality, observability, and lineage through Protobuf-based schema management..
- Participate in the implementation of ingestion best practices and reusable frameworks across data and software engineering teams.
Core Skills
- Solid programming experience (preferably in Java)
- Experience with distributed data systems (Kafka, Snowflake)
- Familiarity with Data Quality tooling and concepts
- Good working knowledge of SQL (especially for diagnostics and DQ workflows)
- Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)
- Strong debugging, observability, and pipeline reliability practices
What You Bring:
- A systems mindset with strong software engineering fundamentals.
- Passion for building resilient, high-throughput, real-time platforms.
- Ability to influence technical direction across teams and drive alignment.
- Strong communication and mentoring skills.
- A bias toward automation, continuous improvement, and platform thinking.
Nice to Haves
- Experience with GenAI tools or supporting ML/AI data workflows
- Familiarity with cloud-native data platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP)
- Exposure to dbt or ELT frameworks