Senior Data Engineer (Data & AI Engineering)

We are looking for a highly skilled Senior Data Engineer based in Ontario, Canada to become part of our core Data & AI Engineering team. In this pivotal role, you will be responsible for designing and expanding enterprise-level data infrastructure that enables ZoomInfo's internal teams to interact with data comprehensively—extracting, exploring, analyzing, and generating insights—through various platforms using ZI's internal chat agent

The ideal candidate has a strong background in big data processing, pipeline orchestration, and data modeling, with a proven track record of delivering scalable and high-quality data solutions in fast-paced, data-centric product environments. Given the dynamic nature of emerging technologies, this role requires an individual who excels at exploration and embraces continuous learning as core responsibilities. You'll constantly research and implement innovative solutions while integrating vast, diverse data sources into our AI applications, including our industry-leading LLM-powered systems

What you’ll do:

• Design, develop, and maintain high-performance, product-centric data pipelines using Airflow, DBT, and Python.
• Architect and optimize the massive-scale data warehouse and lakehouse that serves as our single source of truth for all customer data, primarily using Snowflake.
• Lead the integration of diverse structured and unstructured data sources (e.g., web data, third-party APIs) into our data ecosystem, ensuring high-quality and reliable ingestion.
• Implement and enforce Model Context Protocol (MCP) or similar architectures to feed accurate and contextual data into our LLM-powered products for applications like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and advanced search.
• Collaborate with ML engineers, data scientists, and product managers to translate business needs into scalable data solutions that directly enhance customer value.
• Define, monitor, and enforce data quality SLAs across all pipelines and products, ensuring data accuracy and lineage are a top priority.
• Mentor and coach junior engineers, promoting best practices in code quality, data architecture, and operational excellence.
• Participate in architectural decisions and long-term strategy planning for our enterprise-wide data infrastructure, with a focus on cost, performance, and reliability.

What you bring:

• Expert-level SQL for building performant, scalable queries and transformations on massive datasets.
• Strong Python programming skills with a focus on distributed computing, data manipulation, and building robust APIs.
• Production-level experience for large-scale batch and streaming data processing.
• Hands-on experience with DBT (Data Build Tool) for advanced data modeling and transformations in a modern data stack.
• Deep knowledge of Snowflake data warehouse design, optimization, and cost modeling.
• Experience implementing Model Context Protocol (MCP) or similar architectures to feed structured and unstructured data into LLM-powered systems.
• Strong understanding of data architecture concepts including data lakes, event-driven architectures (e.g., Kafka), ETL/ELT, and data mesh.
• Proficiency with cloud platforms (GCP and/or AWS) and infrastructure as code (e.g., Terraform).

Nice to Have

• Familiarity with LLMOps, LangChain, or RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) pipelines.
• Experience with building embedding models or pipelines for Named Entity Recognition (NER).
• Knowledge of data cataloging tools (e.g., OpenLIneage etc) and lineage tracking.
• Familiarity with other distributed systems and databases (e.g., DynamoDb, Flink).

Required Non-Technical Skills

• Excellent communication skills – ability to explain complex technical concepts to both engineering teams and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strategic & Product-Oriented Thinking – can translate business objectives and customer needs into scalable, high-impact data solutions.
• Leadership & Mentorship – experience guiding and uplifting engineering teams to achieve their full potential.
• Stakeholder Management – able to collaborate effectively across departments (Product, Engineering, Sales, Compliance).
• Agility & Adaptability – thrives in ambiguous, evolving environments and can rapidly prototype and iterate on solutions.
• Strong documentation habits and ability to evangelize best practices across the organization.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 8+ years of progressive experience in data engineering, with a track record of leadership and impact.
• Demonstrated experience in implementing or scaling data infrastructure for a data-centric product company.

Location: Toronto, CA (Remote/Hybrid).

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