Lead Software Engineer (Identity)

Zeta Global; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited PTO

Excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage

Employee Equity

Employee Discounts

Virtual Wellness Classes

Pet Insurance

Job summary

A leading AI marketing firm in San Francisco seeks a Lead Software Engineer. You will design and build backend services and APIs for identity resolution, develop event-driven pipelines, and deploy cloud-native services on Kubernetes. The ideal candidate has extensive experience in backend engineering, strong skills in Python or Java, and a passion for mentoring teams. This role offers a competitive salary and excellent benefits including unlimited PTO, medical and dental coverage, and employee equity.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in backend and/or data engineering at scale.
• Strong skills in Python, Java, or Scala with expertise in APIs and distributed systems.
• Hands-on experience with Kafka, Spark/Hive/Flink, and workflow schedulers.

Responsibilities

• Design and build backend services and APIs for identity resolution.
• Develop and optimize event-driven pipelines processing billions of signals.
• Deploy cloud-native services on EKS/Kubernetes.

Skills

Python

Java

Scala

Kafka

Spark/Hive/Flink

Kubernetes

SQL

Data Modelling

Tools

Kubernetes (EKS preferred)

Airflow

Helm

Job description

WHO WE ARE

Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA) is the AI‑Powered Marketing Cloud that leverages advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and trillions of consumer signals to make it easier for marketers to acquire, grow, and retain customers more efficiently. Through the Zeta Marketing Platform (ZMP), our vision is to make sophisticated marketing simple by unifying identity, intelligence, and omnichannel activation into a single platform – powered by one of the industry’s largest proprietary databases and AI. Our enterprise customers across multiple verticals are empowered to personalize experiences with consumers at an individual level across every channel, delivering better results for marketing programs. Zeta was founded in 2007 by David A. Steinberg and John Sculley and is headquartered in New York City with offices around the world. To learn more, go to www.zetaglobal.com.

The Opportunity

At Zeta Global, identity is at the core of our marketing cloud. The Identity team builds and operates backend services that power the Zeta Identity Graph – collecting, resolving, and maintaining billions of behavioral, demographic, and transactional signals. These services enable people‑based marketing at scale, ensure trust and transparency in how identity data is managed, and provide critical APIs and event streams consumed across Zeta’s platform. Our systems support more than 235 million consumer profiles and process billions of events monthly, requiring services that are highly available, low‑latency, and built to scale.

Lead Software Engineer

We are looking for a Lead Software Engineer who brings strength in both backend distributed systems and data engineering. In this role, you’ll design APIs and event‑driven services, scale our systems to handle rapidly growing data volumes, and modernize our platform for resilience, transparency, and performance.

You Will:

• Design and build backend services and APIs for identity resolution, graph transparency, and integrations.
• Develop and optimize event‑driven pipelines and workflows processing billions of signals.
• Deploy and operate cloud‑native services on EKS/Kubernetes, leveraging Helm for repeatable deployments.
• Ensure reliability, observability, and scalability across services and data pipelines.
• Collaborate across engineering, product, and data teams to deliver end‑to‑end identity solutions.
• Mentor engineers and influence architecture and roadmap.

You Have:

• 5+ years of experience in backend and/or data engineering at scale.
• Strong skills in Python, Java, or Scala, with expertise in APIs, distributed systems, and event‑driven design.
• Hands‑on experience with Kafka (or similar), Spark/Hive/Flink, and workflow schedulers (Airflow/Luigi).
• Proficiency with Kubernetes (EKS preferred) and deployment practices (Helm, service meshes).
• Solid knowledge of SQL, data modelling, and cloud platforms (AWS).
• Familiarity with columnar / NoSQL databases (Aerospike, Snowflake, HBase, Scylla, Couchbase).
• Strong communication skills and a track record of driving technical direction and mentoring teams.

Bonus Skills:

• Experience with large‑scale or multi‑tenant distributed systems.
• Exposure to real‑time streaming frameworks (Flink, Storm).
• Knowledge of open table formats (Iceberg, Hudi, Delta Lake).
• Background in security, compliance, or privacy related to identity systems.

BENEFITS & PERKS

• Unlimited PTO
• Excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Employee Equity
• Employee Discounts, Virtual Wellness Classes, and Pet Insurance and more!!

SALARY RANGE

The salary range for this role is $150,000 – $200,000, depending on location and experience.

PEOPLE & CULTURE AT ZETA

Zeta considers applicants for employment without regard to, and does not discriminate on the basis of an individual’s sex, race, color, religion, age, disability, status as a veteran, or national or ethnic origin; nor does Zeta discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. We’re committed to building a workplace culture of trust and belonging, so everyone feels invited to bring their whole selves to work. We provide a forum for employees to celebrate, support and advocate for one another. Learn more about our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion here: https://zetaglobal.com/blog/a-look-into-zetas-ergs/.

We are committed to building diverse teams with different identities, backgrounds and perspectives. We believe in providing a forum to connect at Zeta, to learn and celebrate differences. Our mission is to ensure we have an environment that enables a deep level of trust and belonging, so everyone feels invited to bring their whole selves to work, and to increase both diversity at Zeta as well as in the technology industry.

Zeta considers applicants for employment within the bounds of applicable federal, state, and local law. Any protected group information provided will not be considered for employment decisions.