Scale Engineer

Frontend AI Principal Engineer - Cortex Code

Frontend Engineer · Principal · Full Time

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

What you'll do.

Lead the frontend architecture and user experience design for Snowflake's Cortex Code (CoCo), an industry-leading AI coding agent platform for data. As a Principal Engineer, you'll shape the strategic vision for agentic systems interfaces, define design abstractions across the product, and drive cross-functional collaboration with design, product, and infrastructure teams while building scalable, performant experiences that make data accessibility and automation effortless for enterprise customers.

Responsibilities

  • Architectural Vision Leadership: Define and establish the architectural vision for the Cortex Code agentic platform, ensuring design consistency and abstraction patterns are maintained across the entire product surface. Lead technical decisions that shape how coding agents integrate with user interfaces while maintaining scalability and performance standards across distributed systems.
  • Exceptional User Experience Design: Design and build world-class frontend experiences with exceptional polish and interaction design that simplify complex data problems for customers. Ensure highest-level UX quality through iterative prototyping, user feedback integration, and creative problem-solving to make sophisticated agentic systems intuitive and delightful.
  • Cross-Functional Leadership & Collaboration: Drive strong collaboration with design, product management, and sister teams including data sharing, cloud infrastructure, and cross-region replication. Establish clear communication channels, facilitate technical discussions, and align stakeholders around shared product vision and engineering roadmap decisions.
  • Platform & Feature Development: Develop innovative platform offerings for agentic systems with global mindset and cross-regional capabilities. Coordinate feature delivery across team boundaries, ensuring seamless integration with backend systems, SDKs, and enterprise infrastructure while maintaining API consistency and design patterns.
  • Technical Leadership & Mentoring: Establish yourself as a technical authority on frontend architecture, code quality standards, and performance optimization. Mentor engineers on best practices, guide architectural decisions, and foster a culture of technical excellence through code review, knowledge sharing, and collaborative problem-solving.
  • Product Vision & Strategy: Contribute strategically to product roadmap planning and vision development. Influence long-term direction through technical insights about feasibility, scalability, and user experience implications. Communicate compelling vision to team, stakeholders, and leadership using data-driven recommendations and creative proposals.
  • Performance & Scalability Engineering: Build for enterprise-scale performance, ensuring frontend applications handle millions of complex queries daily without degradation. Implement optimization strategies, establish performance benchmarks, conduct profiling and monitoring, and drive continuous improvements in load times and responsiveness.
  • Agentic Systems Implementation: Lead the implementation of agentic systems on the frontend, leveraging modern agent-based architectures and SDLCs for interactive applications. Architect patterns for agent orchestration, prompt engineering integration, and real-time feedback loops that create seamless human-AI collaboration experiences.

Qualifications

What we look for.

Technical

  • JavaScript & TypeScript Proficiency

    Expert-level proficiency in JavaScript and TypeScript for building modern, type-safe web applications. Deep understanding of language features, async programming patterns, and frameworks ecosystem essential for large-scale production systems.

  • React Framework Expertise

    Advanced React experience including component architecture, state management, hooks, performance optimization, and ecosystem tools. Strong grasp of modern React patterns and ability to design scalable component systems for complex data visualization and agent interfaces.

  • Modern Web Architecture & API Design

    Deep understanding of modern web application architecture, API design patterns (REST, GraphQL), frontend-backend integration, and performance optimization techniques. Experience with scalable frontend patterns for handling high-volume data and complex user interactions.

  • Agentic Systems & AI Integration

    Hands-on experience building and deploying interactive applications with agentic systems, AI-powered features, or coding agents. Understanding of agentic software development lifecycle, LLM integration patterns, prompt engineering, and agent orchestration architectures.

  • Data Visualization & Interactive Dashboards

    Demonstrated expertise in building rich data visualization platforms, interactive dashboards, and analytics interfaces. Experience with visualization libraries and designing intuitive interfaces for complex, multi-dimensional datasets.

  • Electron & Desktop Application Development

    Experience developing desktop applications using Electron framework and VS Code tools/libraries. Understanding of desktop application constraints, native integration patterns, and cross-platform compatibility considerations.

  • Distributed Systems Knowledge

    Solid understanding of distributed system concepts relevant to frontend engineering including eventual consistency, data synchronization, cross-region replication, and handling network reliability in real-time collaborative applications.

  • Software Development Lifecycle Proficiency

    Deep expertise across full SDLC including requirements analysis, design, development, contemporary testing methodologies, version control, release management, and deployment processes for enterprise-scale products.

Education

  • Computer Science or Related Degree

    Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field. Advanced degree or equivalent professional experience demonstrating deep computer science fundamentals preferred.

Experience

  • 15+ Years Frontend Development

    Minimum 15+ years of professional software development experience with significant focus on product web UI application development. Demonstrated track record of shipping world-class experiences at scale and leading multiple full product lifecycle initiatives.

  • Technical Leadership & Architecture

    Proven technical leadership experience as architect or tech lead for multiple high-impact, customer-facing projects. Evidence of influencing technical direction, establishing standards, and building high-performing engineering teams.

  • Agentic Systems Development

    Professional experience with agentic systems, AI coding agents, or intelligent automation platforms. Track record of implementing agent-based architectures in production environments and optimizing user experiences for AI-augmented workflows.

  • Large-Scale System Development

    Experience building systems that serve millions of users or handle extreme scale. Demonstrated expertise in performance optimization, caching strategies, scalability patterns, and maintaining system reliability under high load.

  • Enterprise SaaS Experience

    Background building or contributing to enterprise-grade SaaS platforms serving hundreds of customers in production. Understanding of enterprise security requirements, compliance, data handling, and building for reliability and uptime.

Skills

Required

  • React & Component Architecture

    Advanced React expertise including functional components, hooks, context API, state management integration, and building scalable component systems for complex applications.

  • TypeScript

    Strong TypeScript proficiency for writing type-safe, maintainable code in large-scale applications. Experience with advanced type system features and establishing TypeScript best practices.

  • API Integration & Design

    Experience designing and consuming RESTful and GraphQL APIs. Understanding of API versioning, contract-first development, and optimizing frontend-backend communication patterns.

  • Performance Optimization

    Expertise in frontend performance profiling, optimization techniques, bundle analysis, lazy loading, and caching strategies. Experience monitoring and improving Core Web Vitals and application responsiveness.

  • Web Standards & DOM APIs

    Deep understanding of HTML, CSS, DOM APIs, browser APIs, and web platform standards. Ability to build accessible, performant applications following WCAG guidelines.

  • Architectural Design & Systems Thinking

    Ability to design scalable frontend architectures, make technology choices with long-term implications, and communicate technical vision to stakeholders at various levels.

  • Testing & Quality Assurance

    Experience with unit testing, integration testing, e2e testing frameworks, and establishing quality standards. Knowledge of testing patterns for complex, data-heavy applications.

  • Distributed System Concepts

    Understanding of distributed systems principles applicable to frontend including eventual consistency, optimistic updates, conflict resolution, and cross-region synchronization.

Preferred

  • Electron Development

    Nice to have

    Experience building desktop applications with Electron framework, understanding desktop constraints, native APIs, and cross-platform compatibility considerations.

  • VS Code Extension Development

    Nice to have

    Familiarity with VS Code extension APIs, extension architecture, and building productivity tools for developer workflows.

  • AI/ML Integration

    Nice to have

    Experience integrating LLMs, coding assistants, or AI-powered features into frontend applications. Knowledge of prompt engineering, agent orchestration, and real-time streaming responses.

  • Data Visualization Libraries

    Nice to have

    Proficiency with visualization libraries like D3.js, Plotly, Apache ECharts, or similar tools for building rich, interactive analytics interfaces.

  • Node.js Backend Development

    Nice to have

    Experience with Node.js, Express, or similar backend frameworks for full-stack development and understanding backend architecture implications.

  • Cloud Platform Experience

    Nice to have

    Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and deploying applications to cloud infrastructure. Understanding of CDN, serverless functions, and cloud-native patterns.

  • Developer Tools & Tooling

    Nice to have

    Experience building developer-centric tools, CLIs, or integrations with development workflows. Understanding of developer experience principles and productivity optimization.

  • Collaborative Development Practices

    Nice to have

    Strong experience in distributed team environments, open-source contributions, code review practices, and fostering collaborative engineering culture.

Tech stack

Languages

JavaScriptTypeScriptNode.js

Frameworks

ReactAngularElectron

Databases

Snowflake Data Warehouse

Tools

Git & Version ControlWebpack/ViteVS CodeJest/VitestCypress/PlaywrightDocker

Other

REST & GraphQL APIsState ManagementAgentic Systems ArchitectureDesign Systems & Component LibrariesWeb Performance & Core Web VitalsAccessibility (WCAG)

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.

How do you make the world's most powerful coding agent for data a delight to use? We are the fastest growing software company at this scale in history and looking to push that to new heights by building the best coding agent in the industry.

The Cortex Code (CoCo) team is building the future of coding agents for working with data. See our flagship product in action: CoCo Desktop in Action.

As a Frontend AI Principal Engineer, you are the cornerstone of delivering the ultimate user experience. You will be entrusted with the highest level of polish, creativity, and interaction design, pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the most innovative areas of our product. This role offers the unique opportunity to have broad creative license, empowering you to lead and create groundbreaking systems and experiences that marry aesthetics with functionality, making data more accessible and actionable for our customers.

AS THE FRONTEND AI PRINCIPAL ENGINEER YOU WILL:

  • Design and build exceptional experiences, ensuring the highest level of polish, creativity, and interaction to solve complex customer problems.

  • Define the architectural vision for the CoCo coding agent platform and ensure consistency of design abstractions across the entire product surface

  • Develop innovative platform offerings, with a global mindset, and to operate across regional boundaries

  • Promote strong collaboration within a cross functional team, including design, product management.

  • Deliver features requiring close coordination with several sister teams such as data sharing, cloud infrastructure, and cross-region replication.

  • Be a strong contributor to the product vision and drive team planning.

  • Motivate others to act, creating a compelling vision for the future, communicating clearly, and using a collaborative leadership approach.

  • Build for scale and high performance.

OUR IDEAL FRONTEND AI PRINCIPAL ENGINEER WILL HAVE:

  • Significant software development experience, including 15+ years of experience in product web UI application development and shipping world class experiences.

  • Experience with agentic systems and/or coding agents.

  • Experience with Agentic SDLC – Building and deploying rich experiences with agents.

  • Experience contributing to interactive dashboards and visualization platforms and/or rich data visualization.

  • Distributed system development experience is a big plus.

  • Deep understanding of modern web applications design architecture, good API design patterns, performance and scale.

  • Experience in the software development lifecycle process, including analysis and design, APIs, development tools and technologies, release and version control, contemporary testing methodologies, and deployment management

  • Demonstrated technical leadership experience, such as being an architect or tech lead for high impact customer facing projects.

  • Experience in modern technologies such as javascript, typescript, react, angular, node.

  • Experience with Electron, VS code tools/libraries is a plus.

WHY JOIN THE ENGINEERING TEAM AT SNOWFLAKE?

BUILDING CUTTING EDGE CLOUD TECHNOLOGIES IS COMPLEX, AND OUR ENGINEERING TEAM SURMOUNTS THE OBSTACLES. AS A MEMBER OF OUR TEAM, YOU WILL:

  • Build an industry-leading data platform that customers love.

  • Create intuitive, elegant, and accessible user interfaces that make a powerful and highly technical product simple to use.

  • Learn about and contribute to:

    • Super-robust and secure enterprise SaaS platform that services hundreds of customers and millions of complex queries daily.

    • Highly-scalable and reliable data processing platform that runs on hundreds and thousands of machines.

    • User interfaces bridging the enterprise world with the consumer experience.

  • Join a world-class team of both industry veterans and rising stars.

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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