Zocdoc

Staff Software Engineer, Data Platform

Zocdoc

full-time

Posted on:

Location Type: Remote

Location: New YorkUnited States

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Salary

💰 $180,000 - $275,000 per year

Job Level

About the role

  • Defining and evolving data contract standards across the company, including schema enforcement, versioning, and validation patterns.
  • Designing interoperable ingestion and publishing frameworks that enable upstream producers (e.g., product engineering teams) to integrate seamlessly with the data platform.
  • Building and standardizing APIs, libraries, or SDKs that simplify event logging, schema validation, and contract compliance.
  • Establishing best practices for schema registry usage and distributed schema validation across streaming and batch systems (e.g., Kafka-based systems).
  • Designing clear patterns for:
  • When to use the data lake vs. the warehouse
  • How curated layers are exposed
  • How downstream consumers access data safely
  • Leading reverse ETL and activation architecture to support operational use cases.
  • Defining and enforcing access control, governance, and compliance standards (e.g., PHI/PII handling, DEID boundaries, RBAC).
  • Partnering with Product Engineering, Security, Compliance, Analytics Engineering, and Infrastructure to align on standards and long-term direction.
  • Mentoring engineers and influencing engineering culture around data quality, ownership, and contracts.
  • Driving adoption of AI-assisted development practices (e.g., cloud-based coding environments, internal AI tooling, or agentic workflows) to accelerate platform delivery.
  • Designing guardrails for AI access to data systems, including scoped permissions, auditing, and compliance-aware controls.
  • Partnering with product and AI teams to ensure our data contracts, schemas, and curated layers are AI-consumable and safe by default.
  • Evaluating how internal data platform assets can power AI use cases and intelligent automation across the company.

Requirements

  • 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 (e.g., Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, internal code generation frameworks, or similar systems).
  • 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.
Benefits
  • 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
  • Great Place to Work Certified
Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard Skills & Tools
PythonSQLdata contractsschema governancedistributed data systemsSparkdata warehousesAPIsRBACAI-assisted development
Soft Skills
clear communicationmentoringinfluencing standardscross-functional leadership