Director of Engineering, AI Enterprise

Engineering Manager · Director · Full Time

US-CA-Menlo ParkUSD 264k – 380k1w ago
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Role

What you'll do.

As Director of Engineering for AI Enterprise at Snowflake, you will lead a world-class, global engineering organization building cutting-edge AI and machine learning solutions on the Cortex AI Platform. This critical leadership role requires 12+ years of software engineering experience with 4+ years directing engineering teams, combined with deep hands-on expertise in generative AI, LLMs, and enterprise-scale deployments. You'll partner with Fortune 100 customers to deliver transformative AI solutions while managing cross-functional stakeholder relationships, scaling organizational capabilities, and shaping the future of enterprise AI on Snowflake's Data Cloud.

Responsibilities

  • Build and Scale Engineering Organization: Recruit, mentor, and develop a high-performing global engineering team focused on AI Solutions. Establish organizational structure that supports rapid scaling across multiple geographic locations, fostering a culture of innovation, ownership, and engineering excellence while maintaining technical rigor and code quality standards.
  • Define Technical Vision and Strategy: Architect the long-term technical direction for the AI Solutions product line, ensuring alignment with Snowflake's product evolution and business objectives. Design systems leveraging Snowflake Cortex, Snowflake ML, and emerging AI technologies to solve enterprise-scale challenges while maintaining platform scalability and performance.
  • Lead AI/ML Solution Development: Own end-to-end development and deployment of advanced AI and machine learning solutions, from concept through enterprise-grade production. Direct the implementation of generative AI capabilities, including LLM integration, natural language processing, and complex ML pipelines on the Snowflake Data Cloud.
  • Drive Enterprise Customer Success: Serve as senior technical authority in customer engagements with Fortune 100 organizations. Partner directly with customers and Go-To-Market teams to understand complex business requirements, design tailored solutions, and ensure implementations deliver measurable business impact and ROI.
  • Strategic Planning and Resource Management: Participate in strategic planning cycles as the engineering voice, influencing headcount, budget allocation, and product roadmap decisions. Build cross-functional partnerships with Product, Research, Sales, and Customer Success teams to deliver cohesive solutions aligned with business strategy.
  • Advance AI Best Practices and Community Presence: Drive continuous improvement in AI methodologies, emerging technologies, and best practices within the engineering organization. Represent Snowflake's AI platform capabilities and technical vision to the broader software engineering and data science communities through thought leadership and external engagement.
  • Travel and Global Team Engagement: Engage in up to 25% travel to strengthen relationships with global customers, distributed team members, and cross-functional partners. Build personal connections that enhance organizational alignment and accelerate decision-making in a geographically dispersed environment.

Qualifications

What we look for.

Technical

  • Generative AI and LLM Development

    Hands-on experience with large language models, fine-tuning, prompt engineering, and building production-scale generative AI applications. Knowledge of model deployment, inference optimization, and real-time serving in enterprise environments.

  • Machine Learning and Data Science

    Strong technical foundation in machine learning methodologies, statistical analysis, feature engineering, model evaluation, and MLOps practices. Experience with end-to-end ML pipelines and production deployment frameworks.

  • Cloud Data Platforms and Data Warehousing

    Technical expertise with cloud-native data platforms, particularly experience with Snowflake or similar cloud data warehouses. Understanding of cloud architecture, data governance, and scalable analytics infrastructure.

  • Software Architecture and Systems Design

    Demonstrated expertise in designing large-scale, distributed systems with high availability, scalability, and performance requirements. Strong grasp of microservices, API design, and architectural patterns for enterprise applications.

  • Software Engineering Best Practices

    Deep knowledge of modern software engineering practices including version control, CI/CD, testing strategies, code review, and DevOps principles. Experience establishing engineering standards and processes that scale across teams.

Education

  • Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

    BS in Computer Science or related technical discipline required as foundation for advanced software engineering concepts and architecture.

  • Advanced Degree (Preferred)

    MS or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science, or related field preferred to demonstrate deep expertise in AI/ML domains and research foundations.

Experience

  • 12+ Years Software Engineering Leadership

    Minimum 12 years of progressive software engineering experience demonstrating architectural thinking, technical depth, and ability to solve complex systems problems across diverse technology domains.

  • 4+ Years Engineering Director Experience

    At least 4 years in Director-level or equivalent engineering leadership role with proven success managing multiple engineering managers and scaling teams. Track record of building organizational capability, developing talent, and delivering results through others.

  • Enterprise Software Delivery

    Demonstrated experience delivering complex, mission-critical software solutions to large enterprise customers. Deep understanding of enterprise requirements including security, compliance, scalability, reliability, and integration with existing systems.

  • Scaling Engineering Organizations

    Proven track record scaling engineering teams and departments across geographic locations. Experience managing distributed teams, establishing engineering practices, maintaining code quality standards, and preserving culture during rapid growth.

  • AI/ML Technical Expertise

    Deep hands-on technical experience building, training, and deploying machine learning and generative AI solutions. Demonstrated expertise with large language models (LLMs), natural language processing, prompt engineering, and modern AI frameworks and platforms.

Skills

Required

  • Engineering Leadership at Scale

    Proven ability to build, mentor, and scale high-performing engineering teams across multiple geographic regions. Demonstrated success in recruiting top talent, establishing technical culture, and maintaining productivity during organizational growth.

  • AI/ML Technical Depth

    Hands-on expertise building production-grade AI and machine learning solutions, with particular strength in generative AI, LLMs, and natural language processing. Ability to make sound technical decisions on AI architecture and infrastructure.

  • Enterprise Solution Architecture

    Capability to design complex, end-to-end solutions addressing enterprise customer requirements. Strong understanding of enterprise software challenges including security, compliance, integration, scalability, and long-term maintainability.

  • Strategic Communication and Influencing

    Exceptional ability to articulate technical vision and strategy to both engineering teams and non-technical stakeholders including executives, customers, and partners. Strong stakeholder management and ability to build consensus across functions.

  • Cross-Functional Collaboration

    Demonstrated ability to partner effectively with Product, Sales, Delivery, Customer Success, and Research teams. Strong partnership skills with customers to understand requirements and drive business outcomes.

  • Strategic Execution and Project Management

    Combination of strategic vision with strong execution capabilities. Ability to translate long-term strategy into concrete roadmaps, manage complex programs, and drive teams to deliver consistent results.

Preferred

  • Experience with Snowflake or Similar Data Platforms

    Nice to have

    Prior experience working with Snowflake, cloud data warehouses, or similar modern data platforms. Familiarity with Snowflake's architecture, SQL capabilities, or Cortex AI features is advantageous.

  • Fortune 500/100 Customer Engagement

    Nice to have

    Direct experience managing relationships with and delivering solutions to Fortune 500 or Fortune 100 companies. Understanding of large enterprise decision-making, governance structures, and complex deployment scenarios.

  • Advanced Degree in CS or Related Field

    Nice to have

    MS or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science, or related discipline. Demonstrates theoretical foundation in algorithms, AI/ML research, and advanced computer science concepts.

  • Go-To-Market and Sales Enablement Experience

    Nice to have

    Experience collaborating with GTM, Sales, and Marketing teams on customer-facing solutions. Ability to translate customer feedback into product requirements and help accelerate deal cycles.

  • Technical Community Leadership

    Nice to have

    Active participation in technical community including conference speaking, open-source contributions, thought leadership, or advisory roles. Demonstrated ability to represent organization's technical capabilities externally.

  • Experience with Modern AI Frameworks and Tools

    Nice to have

    Hands-on familiarity with contemporary AI/ML frameworks and tools such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, LangChain, LlamaIndex, or similar technologies. Experience with prompt engineering platforms and LLM deployment tools.

Tech stack

Languages

PythonSQLJavaTypeScript/JavaScript

Frameworks

Snowflake CortexSnowflake MLPyTorchTensorFlowLangChainLlamaIndex

Databases

Snowflake Data CloudVector DatabasesPostgreSQL

Tools

KubernetesDockerGit and GitHub/GitLabCI/CD Platforms (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions)MLflowJupyter Notebooks

Other

Large Language Models (LLMs)Natural Language Processing (NLP)Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)Prompt EngineeringModel Deployment and InferenceCloud Architecture (AWS, Azure, GCP)

Compensation

Pay and benefits.

Base·USD 264,000 – 379,500

Equity·Stock options

Full posting

Original listing.

At Snowflake, we are powering the era of the agentic enterprise. To usher in this new era, we seek AI-native thinkers across every function who are energized by the opportunity to reinvent how they work. You don’t just use tools; you possess an innate curiosity, treating AI as a high-trust collaborator that is core to how you solve problems and accelerate your impact. We look for low-ego individuals who thrive in dynamic and fast-moving environments and move with an experimental mindset — who rapidly test emerging capabilities to discover simpler, more powerful ways to deliver results. At Snowflake, your role isn't just to execute a function, but to help redefine the future of how work gets done.

Where Data Does More. Join the Snowflake team.

Snowflake is seeking an entrepreneurial and visionary engineering leader to build and scale our new AI Solutions team. As the Director of Engineering for AI Enterprise, you will be at the forefront of the generative AI revolution, leading a world-class engineering organization that designs and implements cutting-edge solutions on the AI Data Cloud. This is a critical, high-impact leadership role where you will partner with the world's largest companies to solve their most complex challenges and unlock transformative business value using Snowflake's powerful Cortex AI Platform.

IN THIS ROLE AT SNOWFLAKE, YOU WILL:

  • Recruit, mentor, and scale a high-performing, global engineering organization. Foster a culture of innovation, ownership, and engineering excellence.

  • Define the long-term technical vision and organizational structure for the AI Solutions team, ensuring alignment with Snowflake's product evolution and business goals.

  • Lead the technical design and development of advanced AI and machine learning solutions using Snowflake Cortex and Snowflake ML. Own the end-to-end implementation of the AI Solutions product line, from initial concept to enterprise-grade production deployments.

  • Act as the senior engineering authority in customer engagements. Partner closely with Fortune 100 customers and our Go-To-Market (GTM) teams to understand their needs and ensure our solutions drive tangible business impact.

  • Serve as the engineering voice in strategic planning cycles, influencing headcount, budget, and product roadmaps. Forge strong partnerships with Product, Research, and Sales teams to deliver cohesive and powerful solutions.

  • Drive continuous improvement in AI methodologies and best practices. Represent Snowflake's AI capabilities and vision within the broader technical community.

  • Potential for up to 25% travel to engage with customers and global teams.

WE WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU IF YOU HAVE:

  • BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science or related majors, or equivalent experience.

  • 12+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 4 years in an Engineering Director role with experience managing managers.

  • Deep technical expertise in the AI/ML domain, with proven, hands-on experience building and deploying solutions leveraging LLMs, natural language processing, and other generative AI technologies.

  • Strong track record of delivering complex software solutions to enterprise customers, demonstrating a clear understanding of the challenges in a large-scale enterprise environment.

  • Proven experience scaling engineering organizations, including managing teams across multiple geographic locations.

  • Exceptional ability to partner with Product, Sales, Delivery and Customer Success teams and directly with customers to achieve business outcomes.

  • Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to articulate a technical vision and strategy to both technical and non-technical audiences.

  • Strategic mindset combined with strong project management and execution capabilities.

Snowflake is growing fast, and we’re scaling our team to help enable and accelerate our growth. We are looking for people who share our values, challenge ordinary thinking, and push the pace of innovation while building a future for themselves and Snowflake.

How do you want to make your impact?

For jobs located in the United States, please visit the job posting on the Snowflake Careers Site for salary and benefits information: careers.snowflake.com

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