Senior AI Data Engineer - AI Pipelines & Analytics (Hybrid)

Zendesk, Inc.; Dublin; Hybrid; EUR 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Zendesk, Inc. is seeking a Senior AI Data Engineer to design and optimize ELT pipelines, build robust SQL-based data models with dbt, and apply AI-enabled approaches to data operations.

You’ll work across dbt models and datasets to empower Zendesk’s customer-facing analytics and internal reporting platforms. The role requires strong SQL, dbt, and Python skills, plus hands-on experience with cloud data warehouses and modern data tooling.

Qualifications

• 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.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Skills

SQL

dbt

Python

Data modeling

Cloud data platforms

ETL/ELT pipelines

BigQuery/Redshift/Snowflake

Tools

Snowflake

Airflow

Kafka

Looker

AWS

Kubernetes

Terraform

GitHub Actions

Job description

Zendesk, Inc. is seeking a Senior AI Data Engineer to design and optimize ELT pipelines, build robust SQL-based data models with dbt, and apply AI-enabled approaches to data operations.

You’ll work across dbt models and datasets to empower Zendesk’s customer-facing analytics and internal reporting platforms. The role requires strong SQL, dbt, and Python skills, plus hands-on experience with cloud data warehouses and modern data tooling.