Senior Manager, AI Data Engineering

Job Description

Who we’re looking for:
 

The ‘Zendesk Analytics Prototyping’ (ZAP) team is chartered to evolve Zendesk’s business intelligence framework with a focus on AI data, measurement, and ROI insights. We build fine-grained, highly curated, contextually rich datasets capturing every facet of Zendesk’s support operations—both human- and AI-driven—and develop measurements and insights that reflect the true value delivered by AI applications to our customers and their end users. Once prototyped and validated, these metrics and insights are operationalized internally and delivered externally through customer-facing reports.

We’re seeking a Senior Manager, AI Data Engineering to lead this mission by guiding a team of data engineers who design, deploy, and maintain robust OLAP data models built on Snowflake. In this role, you will ensure the creation of best-in-class, foundational AI datasets curated for internal research and customer-facing reporting. By championing a high quality, comprehensive AI Product data model, you will help solidify Zendesk’s position as an AI-first, data-centric organization, empowering us to deliver exceptional customer experiences rooted in cutting-edge analytics.

What you’ll be doing:

• Manage, mentor and grow a team of 4-5 Data Engineers, promoting best practices with DBT/Snowflake data modelling and pipeline development.

• Own team outcomes, ensuring delivered solutions are robust, scalable and have appropriate monitoring and operational support.

• Own, develop and maintain the AI data models for internal analytics and customer-facing reporting. 

• Assess data system health and data quality, identifying key areas for investment.

• Participate in product and engineering roadmap development and identify key areas for innovation and improvement, and incorporate these into ongoing & future development initiatives

• Build and manage relationships with a broad set of cross functional stakeholders including product managers, software engineers, data platform engineers, scientists, data governance and more.

What you bring to the role:

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science/Information Systems or related field. 

• 10+ years technical work experience

• 3+ years prior experience in a technology management capacity

• Experience leading efforts in designing, building and maintaining data pipelines

• Strong understanding of relational database design and proficiency utilizing tools such as Snowflake, PostgreSQL, Aurora or similar

• Experience designing scalable OLAP data models - proficiency in dimensional modeling and star/snowflake schema design to optimize reporting and analytics performance.

• Experience managing and deploying code using a source control product such as GitHub

• Strong proficiency in Python, SQL, DBT and other data engineering technologies. Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS preferred), big data tools (e.g. Spark, Hadoop), and distributed systems.

• 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.

• Ability to work cross-functionally with product teams, data scientists, software engineers, and business leaders. Strong communicator, able to explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

• Familiarity with data governance principles and best practices, including data quality, data lineage, and security standards.

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in Computer Science/Information Systems or related field

• SnowPro Core certification or equivalent hands-on experience with SnowFlake.

• Familiarity with Lean/6 Sigma principles and an understanding of CRM analytics.

Our Data Stack:
 

ELT (Snowflake, dbt, Airflow, Kafka)

Infrastructure (AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform, GitHub Actions)

BI (QuickSight, Looker)

#LI-KO1

Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request.