Staff Software Engineer - Data

Role Overview: You are a smart and adaptable Staff Software Engineer who will play a crucial role in building and evolving a real-time data ingestion platform at Zendesk. Your work will focus on the intersection of software engineering and data infrastructure, where you will design and maintain scalable systems for streaming high-quality data from Kafka to Snowflake via Snowpipe Streaming. This role places strong emphasis on data quality, observability, and pipeline reliability, requiring you to develop robust monitoring and alerting systems. You will join a high-performing team, contribute to important architecture decisions, and collaborate with other engineers to shape the flow of data within Zendesk's ecosystem. Key Responsibilities: - Design, build, and maintain data quality systems and pipelines. - Utilize tools such as Snowflake, Docker/Kubernetes, and Kafka to facilitate scalable and observable data movement. - Collaborate cross-functionally to address skill gaps in data quality and platform tooling, contributing to the development of internal tools supporting schema validation, data experimentation, and automated checks. - Work closely with data producers, analytics engineers, platform teams, and business stakeholders to ensure seamless collaboration. - Take ownership of the reliability, scalability, and performance of ingestion systems deployed on AWS. - Architect and construct core components of the real-time ingestion platform using Kafka and Snowpipe Streaming. - Advocate for software engineering excellence by focusing on testing, observability, CI/CD, and automation. - Lead the development of platform tools that guarantee data quality, observability, and lineage through Protobuf-based schema management. - Participate in implementing best practices for ingestion and frameworks that can be reused across data and software engineering teams. Qualifications Required: - Solid programming experience, preferably in Java. - Experience with distributed data systems like Kafka and Snowflake. - Familiarity with Data Quality tooling and concepts. - Proficient in SQL, especially for diagnostics and data quality workflows. - Experience with containerization tools such as Docker and Kubernetes. - Strong skills in debugging, observability, and ensuring pipeline reliability. Additional Company Details: Zendesk software was created to bring a sense of calm to the often chaotic world of customer service. The company powers billions of conversations with well-known brands and believes in offering its employees a fulfilling and inclusive experience through a hybrid way of working. This approach allows employees to come together in person at Zendesk offices worldwide for connection, collaboration, and learning, while also providing flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. Zendesk also strives to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans as required by law. (Note: The above section includes additional details about the company for context and may be omitted if not required.),