Principal Analytics Engineer

Role Description

As a Principal Analytics Engineer, you will shape the practice itself, defining how BI and analytics engineering scales across the company and how our data infrastructure evolves to meet the demands of AI-powered analytics. You will build a deep understanding of our mission, business model, and customers to identify opportunities to simplify processes, improve alignment, and strengthen our metrics platform. You will design semantic layer architecture that enables consistent, trusted data across BI, data science, and AI tools, while leading cross-organizational initiatives and influencing tooling and infrastructure decisions. This role requires deep technical expertise, strategic vision, and strong influence across teams.

You Will Get To:

• Dive deep into Zillow's internal and third party data to model data that accurately reflect our customer journey and business processes.
• Design a reusable, modular semantic layer that makes metrics and dimensions consumable across BI tools, data science workflows, and AI systems, while promoting consistency across those surfaces.
• Lead cross-organizational data initiatives that align with company strategy and roadmap planning.
• Drive alignment on metric definitions and data governance standards across business lines.
• Influence build-versus-buy decisions for analytics tooling, semantic layer platforms, and data governance systems.
• Mentor senior analytics engineers as well as shape strategic direction and technical standards for analytics engineering across the organization.
• Partner with executive stakeholders to influence how the data infrastructure must evolve to support company objectives.
• Operate high availability data and reporting within SLA through quality alerting, detecting issues before customers and resolving with a sense of urgency.

This role has been categorized as a Remote position. “Remote” employees do not have a permanent corporate office workplace and, instead, work from a physical location of their choice, which must be identified to the Company. U.S. employees may live in any of the 50 United States, with limited exceptions.

In California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Washington state, and Washington DC the standard base pay range for this role is $143,600.00 - $229,400.00 annually. This base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations.

In Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia the standard base pay range for this role is $136,400.00 - $218,000.00 annually. The base pay range is specific to these locations and may not be applicable to other locations.

In addition to a competitive base salary this position is also eligible for equity awards based on factors such as experience, performance and location. Actual amounts will vary depending on experience, performance and location. Employees in this role will not be paid below the salary threshold for exempt employees in the state where they reside.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional experience in analytics engineering, data engineering, visualization, or a related technical data role.
• Experience shipping customer facing, production grade reporting on time and accurately every day.
• Expert-level SQL and data modeling skills with experience designing data architectures that span multiple business domains.
• Excellent communication and partner management skills, with a consistent ability to gain alignment and influence across product development, engineering, analytics, finance, sales and operations.
• Deep experience with semantic layer design, metrics-as-code patterns, and data governance at organizational scale.
• Strong understanding of how AI systems, conversational analytics tools, and machine learning workflows consume structured data.
• Experience evaluating and adopting analytics engineering tooling at the organizational level (dbt, Databricks, Snowflake, or similar).

Company Description

At Zillow, we’re reimagining how people move—through the real estate market and through their careers. As the most-visited real estate platform in the U.S., we help customers navigate buying, selling, financing and renting with greater ease and confidence. Whether you're working in tech, sales, operations, or design, you’ll be part of a company that's reshaping an industry and helping more people make home a reality.

Zillow is honored to be recognized among the best workplaces in the country. Zillow was named one of FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For® in 2025, and included on the PEOPLE Companies That Care® 2025 list, reflecting our commitment to creating an innovative, inclusive, and engaging culture where employees are empowered to grow.

No matter where you sit in the organization, your work will help drive innovation, support our customers, and move the industry—and your career—forward, together.

Zillow Group is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering an inclusive, innovative environment with the best employees. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please contact your recruiter directly.

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with applicable state and local law.

Los Angeles County applicants: Job duties for this position include: work safely and cooperatively with other employees, supervisors, and staff; adhere to standards of excellence despite stressful conditions; communicate effectively and respectfully with employees, supervisors, and staff to ensure exceptional customer service; and follow all federal, state, and local laws and Company policies.