Lead Data Engineer - Healthcare Data & Audience Applications

WHO WE ARE Zeta Global (NYSE: ZETA) is the AI-Powered Marketing Cloud that leverages advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and trillions of consumer signals to make it easier for marketers to acquire, grow, and retain customers more efficiently. Through the Zeta Marketing Platform (ZMP), our vision is to make sophisticated marketing simple by unifying identity, intelligence, and omnichannel activation into a single platform – powered by one of the industry’s largest proprietary databases and AI. Our enterprise customers across multiple verticals are empowered to personalize experiences with consumers at an individual level across every channel, delivering better results for marketing programs. Zeta was founded in 2007 by David A. Steinberg and John Sculley and is headquartered in New York City with offices around the world. To learn more, go to www.zetaglobal.com . Role Overview Zeta Global is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to build and scale healthcare-focused applications and data systems that power audience intelligence, activation, measurement, and reporting across both HCP and DTC workflows. This is a hands-on technical leadership role operating at the intersection of distributed systems, data engineering, and healthcare domain constraints. You will design and deliver systems that integrate identity, audience data, and campaign performance while meeting strict requirements for privacy, compliance, and reliability. The ideal candidate brings strong system design depth, experience building data-intensive platforms, and the ability to lead through architecture and execution in regulated environments. What You’ll Build Full-stack applications supporting HCP and patient (DTC) audience discovery, segmentation, and activation • Scalable data pipelines for ingestion, normalization, and enrichment of healthcare datasets • Identity resolution and data linkage services across fragmented data sources • Reporting, attribution, and measurement systems connecting campaigns to outcomes • APIs and services enabling downstream activation, analytics, and partner integrations Key Responsibilities Lead architecture and hands-on development of distributed systems supporting healthcare data workflows • Design and implement scalable data pipelines (batch and streaming) for large-scale datasets • Build and maintain APIs and services with strong SLAs, observability, and fault tolerance • Implement identity resolution logic including matching, deduplication, and graph-based linkage • Ensure high data quality through validation, reconciliation, and monitoring frameworks • Design systems with strong security controls, including encryption, access control, and auditability • Apply privacy-by-design principles across all systems handling PHI/PII • Partner with Product and Data teams to translate healthcare requirements into scalable architectures • Drive engineering best practices across testing, CI/CD, code quality, and operational excellence • Mentor engineers and act as a technical leader across the team Engineering Expectations Strong experience designing distributed systems (microservices, event-driven architectures) • Deep understanding of data modeling, storage systems (OLTP, OLAP), and data processing frameworks • Experience with streaming and batch processing (e.g., Kafka, Spark, Flink, or similar) • Proficiency in backend development (Python, Java, or Ruby) and API design (REST/gRPC) • Experience building modern front-end applications (React or similar) • Strong experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and infrastructure-as-code • Familiarity with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) • Experience implementing observability (logging, metrics, tracing) and reliability patterns • Strong understanding of performance optimization and scalability tradeoffs Healthcare & Domain Expectations Experience working with HCP data (provider identity, targeting, segmentation) • Experience with patient / DTC data workflows and privacy-aware systems • Understanding of healthcare data ecosystems (claims, provider, or audience datasets) • Familiarity with identity graphs and data onboarding patterns • Experience building reporting or attribution systems tied to business outcomes • Strong grasp of HIPAA, PHI/PII, and regulated data handling requirements Qualifications 8–10 years of software engineering experience with increasing technical ownership • Proven track record of building and scaling data-intensive or distributed systems • Experience working in regulated environments (healthcare strongly preferred) • Strong system design and architecture skills • Ability to lead technically while remaining hands-on in implementation • Strong collaboration skills across engineering, product, and data teams Preferred Experience with healthcare data providers or identity ecosystems • Background in AdTech, MarTech, or audience/data platforms • Experience with privacy-enhancing technologies (tokenization, clean rooms) • Exposure to ML/AI-driven data products or analytics systems BENEFITS & PERKS Unlimited PTO Excellent medical, dental, and vision coverage Employee Equity Employee Discounts, Virtual Wellness Classes, and Pet Insurance And more!! SALARY RANGE The salary range for this role is $200,000 - $215,000, depending on location and experience. PEOPLE & CULTURE AT ZETA Zeta considers applicants for employment without regard to, and does not discriminate on the basis of an individual’s sex, race, color, religion, age, disability, status as a veteran, or national or ethnic origin; nor does Zeta discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. We’re committed to building a workplace culture of trust and belonging, so everyone feels invited to bring their whole selves to work. We provide a forum for employees to celebrate, support and advocate for one another. Learn more about our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion here: https://zetaglobal.com/blog/a-look-into-zetas-ergs/ ZETA IN THE NEWS! https://zetaglobal.com/press/?cat=press-releases #LI-TS1