Senior Software Engineer, Data Platform

Zeta-Global; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 165,000 - 185,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited PTO

Medical coverage

Equity plan

Discounts & pet insurance

Job summary

Zeta Global seeks a Senior Data Platform Engineer to design and operate the data infrastructure supporting its AI-enabled marketing cloud. You will own Lakehouse architecture, distributed compute, data quality, governance, lineage, security, and the platform's operational systems, collaborating with data scientists, data engineers, and product teams.

Hybrid role in CA offices; you will optimize pipelines, deploy scalable data workloads, and mentor peers while contributing to open‑source projects

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience.
• Strong experience in Python, Scala, Java, or another JVM language.
• Experience with Spark or another distributed data‑processing framework.
• Experience building or operating production data platforms, backend systems, or distributed systems.
• Familiarity with Lakehouse architecture, Apache Iceberg, data quality, governance, lineage, metadata, query engines, or real‑time OLAP.
• Working knowledge of AWS services such as EC2, S3, Athena, and IAM.
• Experience improving production reliability through monitoring, alerting, deployment automation, and incident response.
• Strong analytical, communication, and collaboration skills.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Terraform, Airflow, Trino, ClickHouse, Starrocks, or Pinot is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Build and operate Lakehouse, Spark, and distributed data‑processing systems.
• Improve the performance, reliability, cost, and operational visibility of platform workloads.
• Develop capabilities for data quality, governance, lineage, metadata, discoverability, security, and access control.
• Build the data context required for trusted reporting, ML models, and AI agents.
• Evaluate compute and query engines for read‑heavy workloads, assessing cost, performance, reliability, and operational fit.
• Assess real‑time OLAP technologies and identify appropriate production use cases.
• Improve deployment, observability, incident response, developer tooling, and platform operations.
• Partner with data scientists and data engineers to improve their experience using the platform.
• Contribute fixes and improvements to relevant open‑source projects, including Spark, Iceberg, and Airflow.
• Mentor engineers through code reviews, pairing, design discussions, and knowledge‑sharing sessions.

Skills

Python

Scala/Java

Spark

Distributed systems

AWS

Lakehouse

Data governance

Kubernetes

Terraform

Airflow

Tools

Apache Iceberg

Airflow

Trino

ClickHouse

StarRocks

Pinot

Job description

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 ROLE

As a Senior Data Platform Engineer, you will build andoperatethe data infrastructure that supports Zeta’s products, analytics, machine learning, and AI systems.

This is a broadplatform role. Engineers on the team take ownership across Lakehouse architecture, distributed compute, data quality, governance, lineage, security, access controls, and the operational systems that keep the platform running. Individual focus areas will change with team priorities, and you will contribute across the platform as needed.

The teamalsodevelops tooling for type-safe, testable data pipelines andoperatesSpark workloads on dynamically sized Hadoop clusters backed by EC2 Spot instances. We work closely with data engineers, data scientists, infrastructure teams, and product teams to make data dependable, easy to find, secure to use, and cost-effective to process.

This is a hybrid role based out of either our San Mateo, CA or San Francisco, CA office.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Build andoperateLakehouse, Spark, and distributed data‑processing systems.

Improve the performance, reliability, cost, and operational visibility of platform workloads.

Develop capabilities for data quality, governance, lineage, metadata, discoverability, security, and access control.

Build the data context required for trusted reporting, ML models, and AI agents.

Evaluate compute and query engines for read‑heavy workloads, assessing cost, performance, reliability, and operational fit.

Assess real‑time OLAP technologies and identify appropriate production use cases.

Improve deployment, observability, incident response, developer tooling, and platform operations.

Partner with data scientists and data engineers to improve their experience using the platform.

Contribute fixes and improvements to relevant open‑source projects, including Spark, Iceberg, and Airflow.

Mentor engineers through code reviews, pairing, design discussions, and knowledge‑sharing sessions.

QUALIFICATIONS

7+ years of software engineering experience.

Strong experience in Python, Scala, Java, or another JVM language.

Experience with Spark or another distributed data‑processing framework.

Experience building or operating production data platforms, backend systems, or distributed systems.

Familiarity with at least 1 of these areas: Lakehouse architecture, Apache Iceberg, data quality, governance, lineage, metadata, query engines, or real‑time OLAP.

Working knowledge of AWS services such as EC2, S3, Athena, and IAM.

Experience improving production reliability through monitoring, alerting, deployment automation, and incident response.

Strong analytical, communication, and collaboration skills.

Experience with Kubernetes, Terraform, Airflow, Trino, ClickHouse, Starrocks, or Pinot is a plus.

BENEFITS & PERKS

• Unlimited PTO
• Excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage
• Employee Equity and Stock Purchase Plan
• Employee Discounts, Virtual WellnessClasses, andPet InsuranceAndmore!!

SALARY RANGE

The salary range for this role is $165,000 - $185,000, depending on location and experience.

PEOPLE & CULTURE AT ZETA

Zeta considers applicants for employment without regardto anddoes not discriminateon the basis ofan individual’s sex, race, color, religion, age, disability, status as a veteran, or national or ethnic origin; nor does Zeta discriminateon the basis ofsexual orientation, gender identity or expression.

We’recommitted 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, supportand advocate for one another. Learn more about our commitment to diversity,equityand 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.