Principal Data Engineer

ZoomInfo

. Own the technical vision and architecture for scalable, resilient, and cost-effective data platforms and pipelines .

Posted 10/16/2026full-timeRemote • United StatesLead💰 $171,500 - $269,500 per yearWebsite

Core Competencies

Role fit

Core Competencies

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Demonstrates expertise in designing and operating large-scale data platforms and distributed data systems, with a strong focus on end-to-end system design, data governance, and compliance. Proven ability to lead technical decisions, mentor teams, and establish engineering standards for data architecture and pipeline development.

Highest-signal resume keywords

End-To-End System DesignLarge-Scale Data PlatformsSQL ProficiencyData GovernanceTechnical Leadership

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills

Data ModelingBatch ProcessingStreaming ProcessingInfrastructure As CodeCI/CDMetadata ManagementData QualityEvent-Driven FlowsSchema ManagementData Contracts

Soft Skills

Exceptional Communication SkillsMentoring

Tools & Technologies

SparkKafkaFlinkSnowflakeDatabricksBigQueryRedshift

Industry Keywords

Data ArchitectureData PipelinesData LifecycleTechnical DebtGovernanceCompliance

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

Amazon RedshiftBigQueryJavaKafkaPythonScalaSparkSQL

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Own the technical vision and architecture for scalable, resilient, and cost-effective data platforms and pipelines
Design end-to-end batch and streaming data systems, including ingestion, transformation, modeling, storage, orchestration, serving, and consumption
Document architecture decisions and define reusable patterns for CDC, event-driven flows, schema evolution, slowly changing dimensions, data quality, and multi-tenant or domain-oriented models
Lead technical design reviews and identify and mitigate architectural risks and technical debt
Establish engineering standards for development, testing, deployment, documentation, monitoring, incident response, lifecycle management, CI/CD, and infrastructure as code
Implement standards for data contracts, schema management, lineage, observability, freshness, completeness, accuracy, and reconciliation
Champion security, privacy, access control, governance, retention, and compliance across the data lifecycle
Define SLIs, SLOs, alerting, runbooks, and post-incident learning practices
Serve as a technical authority for cross-functional data architecture, tooling, platform, and investment decisions
Evaluate build-versus-buy decisions, technologies, and vendors; maintain architecture records, reference architectures, roadmaps, and technical standards
Lead development of production-grade data pipelines, datasets, and platform capabilities
Partner with analysts, data scientists, software engineers, and product teams to deliver trustworthy data products
Drive modernization, legacy migrations, pipeline consolidation, and reduction of manual operations
Mentor data engineers, lead architecture reviews and workshops, and create reusable templates, implementations, and playbooks

Requirements

What you’ll need

10+ years of experience in software engineering, data engineering, platform engineering, or a related technical discipline
5+ years designing and operating large-scale data platforms, distributed data systems, or enterprise-grade data products
Expertise in end-to-end system design, including requirements definition, tradeoff evaluation, resilient architecture, and production delivery
Deep experience with lakehouse or warehouse platforms, batch and streaming processing, data modeling, orchestration, metadata management, and data governance
Strong proficiency in SQL and at least one general-purpose programming language, such as Python, Java, or Scala
Experience with distributed data processing frameworks and technologies such as Spark, Kafka, Flink, Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, or Redshift
Strong knowledge of analytical, operational, and domain-oriented data modeling
Experience establishing standards for testing, CI/CD, observability, infrastructure as code, reliability, and security
Ability to lead technical decisions across multiple teams without direct authority
Exceptional written and verbal communication skills
Experience mentoring engineers and raising technical standards across an organization

Benefits

Comp & perks

Comprehensive benefits
Holistic mind, body and lifestyle programs designed for overall well-being
Additional compensation may include bonus, commission, equity and other benefits