Zocdoc is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to define and lead the evolution of our Data Platform at the intersection of data engineering and product engineering. You will own how data moves into, across, and out of our lakehouse and warehouse ecosystems, shaping the contracts, access patterns, APIs, and governance controls that enable teams to reliably produce and consume data at scale.
What You'll Do
- Define and evolve data contract standards across the company, including schema enforcement, versioning, and validation patterns.
- Design interoperable ingestion and publishing frameworks that enable seamless integration for upstream producers.
- Build and standardize APIs, libraries, or SDKs that simplify event logging, schema validation, and contract compliance.
- Establish best practices for schema registry usage and distributed schema validation across streaming and batch systems.
- Design clear patterns for when to use the data lake vs. the warehouse, how curated layers are exposed, and how downstream consumers access data safely.
- Lead reverse ETL and activation architecture to support operational use cases.
- Define and enforce access control, governance, and compliance standards.
- Partner with Product Engineering, Security, Compliance, Analytics Engineering, and Infrastructure teams to align on standards and long-term direction.
- Mentor engineers and influence engineering culture around data quality, ownership, and contracts.
- Drive adoption of AI-assisted development practices to accelerate platform delivery.
- Design guardrails for AI access to data systems, including scoped permissions, auditing, and compliance-aware controls.
- Partner with product and AI teams to ensure our data contracts, schemas, and curated layers are AI-consumable and safe by default.
- Evaluate how internal data platform assets can power AI use cases and intelligent automation across the company.
What We're Looking For
- 8+ years of experience in data engineering, platform engineering, or backend platform development.
- Demonstrated experience designing data contracts, schema governance, or producer/consumer standards at scale.
- Strong expertise in Python and SQL, with hands-on experience building scalable data frameworks.
- Experience with distributed data systems such as Spark (Databricks or EMR) and modern lakehouse architectures (Delta Lake / Iceberg).
- Experience with data warehouses such as Snowflake and strong understanding of performance and access patterns.
- Familiarity with schema registry systems and schema evolution in streaming systems (e.g., Kafka).
- Experience building APIs, shared libraries, or platform services adopted by multiple teams.
- Strong understanding of access control, RBAC, and compliance constraints in regulated environments.
- Proven ability to lead cross-functional architectural initiatives across product, analytics, and infrastructure teams.
- Clear communication skills and a track record of influencing standards across an organization.
- Experience working with AI-assisted development tools or cloud-based coding environments.
- Strong understanding of governance considerations for GenAI systems, including access control, prompt safety, sensitive data handling, and auditability.
- Perspective on how structured data models and contracts improve AI reliability and downstream automation.
Nice to Have
- Experience designing reverse ETL frameworks or operational activation pipelines.
- Familiarity with metadata and governance platforms (e.g., Unity Catalog, Collibra, OpenMetadata).
- Experience building internal developer platforms for event logging or data publishing.
- Experience working in regulated environments involving PHI/PII.
- Experience integrating streaming systems (Kafka/Kinesis) with warehouse and lakehouse ecosystems.
Technical Stack
- Languages: Python, SQL
- Processing: Spark, Databricks, EMR
- Lakehouse: Delta Lake, Iceberg
- Warehouse: Snowflake
- Streaming: Kafka, Kinesis
Benefits & Compensation
- Salary range: $180,000—$275,000 USD
- Flexible, hybrid work environment at our convenient Soho location
- Unlimited Vacation
- 100% paid employee health benefit options (including medical, dental, and vision)
- Commuter Benefits
- 401(k) with employer funded match
- Corporate wellness program with Wellhub
- Sabbatical leave (for employees with 5+ years of service)
- Competitive paid parental leave and fertility/family planning reimbursement
- Cell phone reimbursement
- Catered lunch everyday along with beverages and snacks
- Employee Resource Groups and ZocClubs to promote shared community and belonging
Work Mode
This role follows a hybrid work model and is based in NYC.
We are an equal opportunity employer committed to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. Applicants are considered for employment regardless of race, color, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, national origin, gender, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital or parental status, disability, veteran status, or any other class protected by applicable laws.
