Principal Engineer, Data Platform Architecture

Job Description

Zendesk’s mission is to make Customer Experience better—for every brand, every customer, every day. Data and analytics are at the core of this vision. The Zendesk Data Platform (ZDP) empowers more than 125,000 global brands with actionable insights, driving internal analytics and forming the launchpad for our customer-facing analytics solutions.

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).

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on architectural leadership migrating or evolving enterprise-scale data platforms to cloud-native OLAP solutions (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, etc).
• Experience integrating Snowflake with event-driven architectures (Kafka, Kinesis, Pub/Sub).
• Prior experience with customer-facing analytics products and platform integration challenges.
• Contributions to internal or external data platform communities and thought leadership.

If you’re passionate about building world-class data platforms and want to define the analytics foundation driving the next generation of Customer Experience, we want to hear from you.

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The US annualized base salary range for this position is $214,000.00-$320,000.00. This position may also be eligible for bonus, benefits, or related incentives. While this range reflects the minimum and maximum value for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations, the offer for the successful candidate for this position will be based on job related capabilities, applicable experience, and other factors such as work location. Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only (or OTE for commissions based roles), and do not include bonus, benefits, or related incentives.

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 peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request.