Description:
We are seeking an exceptional Principal Engineer – Data Platform Architecture to own and shape the architecture of ZDP, ensuring it is performant, reliable, secure, and cost-optimized at scale. In this role, you will set technical direction for the ingestion, management, and consumption of data on our cloud-scale OLAP platforms, consult widely across teams, and lead the design for our next generation of Snowflake-based data infrastructure.
This is a hands-on technical leadership position. You will architect high-impact data systems, advise on strategic trade-offs, and work alongside data, analytics, and product engineering groups to ensure world-class outcomes for Zendesk and our customers.
What You Get To Do Every Day
- Own the end-to-end architecture of the Zendesk Data Platform -- specifically the mission for ZDP to support internal analytics use-cases and for it to form the launchpad for our customer-facing analytics solutions.
- Ensure that ZDP supports our strategic business needs while meeting standards for scalability, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.
- Lead solution architecture for data ingestion, transformation, governance, and delivery—spanning batch, streaming, and near-real-time scenarios.
- Serve as a technical authority on Snowflake, including advanced features such as Snowpark, Snowpipe, Cortex etc.
- Advise product and engineering leads on data modeling, access policies, and query optimization strategies to enable faster analytics and resilient pipelines.
- Establish engineering best practices for cost monitoring, performance tuning, security, and regulatory compliance across all Data Platform services.
- Guide teams in making architectural trade-offs between compute frameworks (e.g., assessing migration from Spark to Snowflake-native compute), storage design, clustering strategies, and pattern optimizations.
- Act as a cross-functional consultant—communicating complex architecture to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, mediating divergent viewpoints, and driving alignment on long-term data platform direction.
- Ensure that all architectural decisions align with requirements for privacy, auditability, governance, and Zendesk’s standards for operational excellence.
- Provide mentorship to staff and senior engineers, cultivating a culture of technical rigor, growth, and collaboration.
What You Bring To The Role
- 10+ years of experience in large-scale data engineering or analytics infrastructure roles, with at least 3 years at principal or staff-level solution architecture.
- Deep hands-on expertise with Snowflake, including architecture, implementation, performance optimization, and advanced features (Snowpark, Snowpipe, Cortex, Native Apps, external functions, secure sharing).
- Extensive practical knowledge of OLAP warehousing concepts, modern data modeling strategies (e.g., star/snowflake, wide-table, normalized schemas), and design for cost-effective, performant analytics.
- Strong architectural judgment across ETL/ELT, batch and streaming, real-time pipelines, and data access patterns.
- Demonstrated ability to lead technical design reviews, drive technical alignment across multiple engineering teams, and influence data & analytics product strategy.
- Experience optimizing for multi-instance architectures, with a clear understanding of compliance, privacy, and data lifecycle management in a cloud platform context.
- Fluency in SQL and data engineering languages (Python, Javaor similar).
- Ability to navigate and influence in a complex, matrixed organization—translating technical depth into strategic direction for diverse stakeholders.
- Familiarity with regulatory frameworks and audit/compliance implications for enterprise data platforms (e.g., SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA).