Data Engineer III

WHO WE ARE:

Zinnia is the leading technology platform for accelerating life and annuities growth. With innovative enterprise solutions and data insights, Zinnia simplifies the experience of buying, selling, and administering insurance products. All of which enables more people to protect their financial futures. Our success is driven by a commitment to three core values: be bold, team up, deliver value – and that we do. Zinnia has over $180 billion in assets under administration, serves 100+ carrier clients, 2500 distributors and partners, and over 2 million policyholders.

WHO YOU ARE:

We are looking for an experienced Data engineer to join our data engineering team and help design, build, and optimize robust data pipelines and platforms that power our analytics, products, and decision-making. This role demands a strong foundation in big data technologies, excellent programming and SQL skills, and hands-on experience in tuning and optimization for large-scale data processing. You will work closely with data scientists, analysts, product managers, and other engineers to build scalable, efficient, and reliable data solutions.

WHAT YOU'LL DO:

• Design, develop, and maintain scalable big data pipelines using Spark (Scala or PySpark), Hive, and HDFS.
• Build and manage data workflows and orchestration using Airflow.
• Write efficient, production-grade code in any programming language(such as Python, Java, Scala, etc.) to transform and process data.
• Develop complex SQL queries for data transformation, validation, and reporting, ensuring high performance and optimization.
• Tune and optimize Spark jobs and SQL queries to improve performance and resource utilization.
• Work on cloud platforms(AWS, Azure, GCP) to deploy and manage data infrastructure, preferably AWS with EMR.
• Collaborate with data stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver reliable, high-quality data solutions.
• Maintain data quality, governance, and monitoring, ensuring pipelines are robust, observable, and recoverable.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

• Strong experience with Big Data stack: HDFS, Hive, Spark (Scala or PySpark)
• Excellent programming skills in any major language (Python, Java, Scala, etc.)
• Expert in SQL with ability to write and optimize complex queries
• Hands-on experience with Spark tuning and optimization(both compute and SQL layer)
• Experience with Airflow for data workflow orchestration
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 5+ years of experience as a Data Engineer working on large-scale data systems.
• Proven track record of delivering production-ready data pipelines in big data environments.
• Strong analytical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• Exposure to cloud technologies(AWS, Azure, or GCP)

Preferred / Nice-to-Have Skills

• AWS ecosystem, especially EMR (Elastic MapReduce)
• Trino or Presto for interactive querying
• Familiarity with Lakehouse formats(Hudi, Delta, Iceberg)
• Experience with DBT (Data Build Tool) for analytics engineering
• Experience with Kafka (streaming ingestion)
• Familiarity with monitoring tools like Prometheus and Grafana

WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU?

At Zinnia, you collaborate with smart, creative professionals who are dedicated to delivering cutting-edge technologies, deeper data insights, and enhanced services to transform how insurance is done. Visit our website at for more information. Apply by completing the online application on the careers section of our website. We are an Equal Opportunity employer committed to a diverse workforce. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability