Lead Data Platform Engineer - Enterprise, Data & AI

Zoox; Foster City (CA); Hybrid; USD 230,000 - 277,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Paid time off

Zoox Stock Appreciation Rights

Amazon RSUs

Health insurance

Long-term care insurance

Disability insurance (long-term/short)

Life insurance

Unpaid time off

Job summary

Zoox seeks a Lead Data Platform Engineer to architect and own a high-throughput data foundation across enterprise and AI teams. You will design scalable data infrastructure, enforce governance, and drive secure, low-latency data access for analytics and AI agents.

You will lead the data platform effort with a focus on performance tuning, cost optimization, and secure deployment pipelines, shaping standards for security and developer velocity across Zoox.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on experience in Data Platform Engineering or Software Engineering.
• Deep expertise in scaling and optimization, query tuning and cost minimization.
• Experience with RBAC, AD/IAM roles and data masking for compliance.
• Experience building data governance, schema evolution, and observability.
• CI/CD pipelines, environment isolation, version control and automated deployment testing.

Responsibilities

• Scale self-healing data pipelines with schema evolution and anomaly detection.
• Define and enforce company-wide data governance, access, and metadata management.
• Implement storage lifecycle strategies and query optimization for low latency analytics.
• Build automated CI/CD deployment templates and testing frameworks for data assets.

Skills

Data architecture

Leadership

Problem solving

Cloud compute optimization

Tools

Databricks

EKS

Terraform

Active Directory/IAM

Job description

Zoox is seeking a high-agency, hands-on Lead Data Platform Engineer to architect, optimize, scale and own the next generation of our enterprise & AI data foundation. In this role, you will architect a high throughput, data fabric that unifies data across Zoox and downstream AI agents. You will drive performance tuning, cost optimization, RBAC, data governance and CI/CD pipelines to deliver secure, low-latency, 'AI-ready' data foundations across the organization.

You will serve as the primary technical driver for our data platform, designing autonomous frameworks, building scalable data infrastructure and establishing strict standards for security and developer velocity. This is an engineering-intensive leadership role for a builder who thrives on solving complex challenges.

In This Role, You Will...

• Scaling self-healing data pipelines that automatically handle schema evolution, detect anomalies, execute circuit breakers and recover from failures without manual intervention.
• Define and enforce company-wide data governance, access, automated data quality testing, schema evolution policies and metadata management to maintain high-fidelity data assets.
• Implement intelligent storage lifecycle strategies, resource throttling and query optimization to minimize compute overhead while delivering high-throughput, low-latency data access for analytics and AI agents. With a focus on Databricks vs EMR (AWS) cloud optimization (cost and performance).
• Build automated CI/CD deployment templates, environment isolation, testing frameworks and version control standards, enabling rapid, reliable and zero-downtime deployments

Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on experience in Data Platform Engineering or Software Engineering with a proven track record of architecting and scaling production-grade data foundations.
• Deep expertise in scaling and optimization, query tuning, compute resource allocation and implementing efficient compute-storage lifecycle policies to minimize infrastructure costs.
• Experience implementing enterprise security standards, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Active Directory/IAM roles and fine-grained data masking, with strong familiarity supporting enterprise compliance requirements (e.g., SOX, audit trail controls, data retention policies).
• Track record of establishing enterprise data governance frameworks, automated schema evolution controls, data quality audits and near real-time observability/alerting.
• Hands-on experience building automated CI/CD pipelines, environment isolation (branch testing, rollback mechanisms), version control and automated deployment testing for data assets.

Bonus Qualifications

• Experience incorporating LLMs or GenAI directly into pipeline operations (e.g., code generation, triage and root-cause analysis, automated data reconciliation, backfills or anomaly detection).
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform) and containerization/orchestration (EKS) for elastic compute management. GPU/CPU performance optimization & utilization.
• Previous experience in the autonomous vehicle, robotics or high-tech manufacturing sectors.

$230,000 - $277,000 a year

Base Salary Range

There are three major components to compensation for this position: salary, Amazon Restricted Stock Units (RSUs), and Zoox Stock Appreciation Rights. A sign-on bonus may be offered as part of the compensation package. The listed range applies only to the base salary. Compensation will vary based on geographic location and level. Leveling, as well as positioning within a level, is determined by a range of factors, including, but not limited to, a candidate's relevant years of experience, domain knowledge, and interview performance. The salary range listed in this posting is representative of the range of levels Zoox is considering for this position.

Zoox also offers a comprehensive package of benefits, including paid time off (e.g. sick leave, vacation, bereavement), unpaid time off, Zoox Stock Appreciation Rights, Amazon RSUs, health insurance, long-term care insurance, long-term and short-term disability insurance, and life insurance.

About Zoox

Zoox is developing the first ground-up, fully autonomous vehicle fleet and the supporting ecosystem required to bring this technology to market. Sitting at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and design, Zoox aims to provide the next generation of mobility-as-a-service in urban environments. We’re looking for top talent that shares our passion and wants to be part of a fast-moving and highly execution-oriented team.

Follow us on LinkedIn

Accommodations

If you need an accommodation to participate in the application or interview process please reach out to [e-mail] or your assigned recruiter.

A Final Note:

You do not need to match every listed expectation to apply for this position. Here at Zoox, we know that diverse perspectives foster the innovation we need to be successful, and we are committed to building a team that encompasses a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and skills.