Senior AI Data Engineer — AI-Powered Data Pipelines

Zendesk, Inc.; Dublin; Hybrid; EUR 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Zendesk, Inc. is seeking a Senior AI Data Engineer to design, build and optimize ELT pipelines and data models that power customer-facing analytics.

You will work across dbt models, SQL, and Python to enable scalable data assets and AI-enhanced data practices. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate requirements into robust data architectures, improve data delivery, and drive efficiency in cloud-based environments across multiple regions.

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.
• This includes identifying bottlenecks, ensuring scalability, and minimizing operational costs in cloud-based data environments.
• 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

Big data pipelines

Performance optimization

Data modeling

Communication

Tools

Snowflake

BigQuery

Redshift

Looker

Airflow

Kafka

Spark

Job description

Zendesk, Inc. is seeking a Senior AI Data Engineer to design, build and optimize ELT pipelines and data models that power customer-facing analytics.

You will work across dbt models, SQL, and Python to enable scalable data assets and AI-enhanced data practices. You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate requirements into robust data architectures, improve data delivery, and drive efficiency in cloud-based environments across multiple regions.