Senior AI Data Engineer

About the Role We’re seeking a Senior AI Data Engineer to join Zendesk’s Analytics Prototyping (ZAP) team. You will design and ship fine-grained, contextually rich data assets powering Zendesk’s customer-facing analytics and internal analytics. You’ll work across code, dbt models, and datasets to build scalable data assets and help enable an AI-enabled operating model.

What You'll Do

• Develop and maintain ELT pipelines, ensuring data reliability and scalability for business reporting and analytics use cases.
• Build and optimize SQL-based data models using dbt and other ETL tools.
• Support ZAP’s progress toward a more AI-enabled operating model, using emerging technologies to help improve team productivity.
• Identify and implement improvements in data delivery, processing performance, and system efficiency.
• Collaborate with team members to define requirements and translate them into scalable data models and pipelines.
• Contribute to the team’s technical vision and bring innovative solutions to enhance data systems.

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years of data engineering experience building, maintaining and working with data pipelines & ETL processes in big data environments.
• Extensive experience with SQL, ideally in the context of data modeling and analysis.
• Hands-on production experience with dbt, and proven knowledge in modern and classic Data Modeling - Kimball, Inmon, etc.
• Programming skills in Python or a similar language, with an emphasis on data transformation and automation.
• Experience with cloud columnar databases (Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift, Snowflake), query authoring (SQL) as well as working familiarity with a variety of databases.
• Proven experience in performance testing, capacity planning, and cost optimization for large-scale, complex data pipelines and systems. This includes identifying bottlenecks, ensuring scalability, and minimizing operational costs in cloud-based data environments.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.

Nice to Have

• Experience building or operating an AI-augmented engineering practice - agentic IDE workflows, prompt/skill engineering, eval design, and the discipline of treating AI artefacts as production code.
• SnowPro Core certification or equivalent hands-on expertise.
• Hands-on production experience with Apache Spark (Spark SQL / PySpark).
• Familiarity with Lean/6 Sigma principles and an understanding of CRM analytics.

Compensation & Benefits

• Hybrid work model: in-office and remote days across Dublin, Berlin, and Krakow.
• We are an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering diversity, equity and inclusion. All applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.
• Zendesk provides reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans upon request.
• Zendesk may use AI or automated decision systems in screening/evaluating applications in line with company policy and applicable law.