Staff Data Engineer

Job Description

Staff Data Engineer, Product Analytics

Zendesk is looking for a Staff Data Engineer to shape the data foundation that powers product decision-making at scale. This is a high-impact, high-ownership role focused on defining how product data is modeled, trusted, and leveraged across the company. You won’t just build pipelines—you will set direction. You’ll partner with Product, Analytics, and Engineering leaders to design systems and standards that enable consistent, reliable insights and drive measurable improvements in product adoption and customer retention. This role is ideal for someone who thrives in ambiguity, operates at a systems level, and wants to influence how data is used across an entire organization.

What you’ll be doing

• 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

We expect AI to be a core part of how we build and operate data systems:

• 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

What you bring to the role

• 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

Where we work

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 Poland annualized base salary range for this position is zł309,000.00-zł463,000.00. Please note that while the salary range represents the minimum and maximum base salary rate for this position, 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 that will be communicated during the offer stage.

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.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position, in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

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 [email protected] with your specific accommodation request.