Staff Data Engineer

Skip to main contentThis website uses cookies to improve your web experience. By using the site, you agree to the use of cookies. Privacy PolicyDeclineAccept CookiesEnglishSign InStaff Data Engineer page is loadedStaff Data EngineerApplyremote typeHybridlocationsKrakow, PolandMexico City, MexicoLisbon, Portugaltime typeFull timeposted onPosted 30+ Days Agojob requisition idR34927Job DescriptionStaff Data Engineer, Product AnalyticsZendesk 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 doingOwn and evolve the product analytics data architecture, including data models, semantic layers, and core datasets used across multiple teamsDefine and drive standards for data modeling, metric definitions, data quality, and pipeline design across the organizationTranslate ambiguous product and business problems into scalable, well-designed data solutionsDesign and build reliable, observable data pipelines and systems that support both real-time and batch analytics use casesLead cross-team initiatives to standardize schemas, align definitions, and reduce fragmentation in product dataDrive improvements in performance, scalability, and cost efficiency across the data platformEstablish best practices for data testing, monitoring, and SLAs, ensuring high trust in data systemsProvide technical leadership through mentorship, design reviews, and influencing engineering direction beyond your immediate teamPartner with product and engineering leadership to identify where data can unlock new product capabilities or insightsWe 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 outputsIdentify opportunities to incorporate AI solutions into data workflows, data products, and analytics capabilitiesWhat you bring to the role8+ years of experience in data engineering or analytics engineering, with demonstrated ownership of large-scale data systemsDeep expertise in SQL and data modeling for analytics, including designing reusable, well-structured datasetsStrong 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 environmentsExperience implementing data quality, testing, and observability frameworksStrong system design skills and the ability to make thoughtful architectural tradeoffsTrack record of influencing technical direction across teams, not just delivering within a single teamExperience mentoring engineers and raising the overall technical barExcellent communication skills and the ability to work effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholdersWhere we workHybrid: 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...