Scale Engineer

Principal Software Engineer

Principal Engineer · Principal · Full Time

US-CA-Menlo ParkUSD 236k – 339k2d ago
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Role

What you'll do.

Principal Software Engineer at Snowflake responsible for architecting and building AI-first platform infrastructure and developer tooling for Snowsight, the unified user experience layer serving every major Snowflake customer. This senior leadership role requires 12+ years of experience building enterprise-grade systems, with proven expertise in developer productivity platforms, distributed systems, and AI/LLM applications to drive next-generation agentic workflows and achieve 10x developer efficiency gains.

Responsibilities

  • AI-First Platform Architecture & Development: Design and build next-generation AI-first platforms, tools, and best practices that significantly enhance the developer experience for Snowsight, Snowflake's unified user interface serving all customers. Architect scalable solutions that embed AI as a core capability throughout the developer workflow, treating LLM-based agents and AI-assisted development as first-class citizens in platform design.
  • Agentic Development Infrastructure Strategy: Drive strategy and lead initiatives to transform developer workflows through agentic computing paradigms. Build infrastructure that scales developer productivity by 10x, enabling teams to leverage AI agents for code generation, testing, deployment, and incident response. Establish patterns and frameworks that allow teams across Snowflake to rapidly adopt agentic development approaches.
  • System Reliability & Observability Leadership: Improve platform reliability across the entire developer infrastructure stack by establishing comprehensive observability, alerting systems, and service level objectives (SLOs). Implement automated remediation capabilities and monitoring solutions that provide real-time trust signals. Lead efforts to ensure that increased developer velocity from AI tooling does not compromise system stability or code quality.
  • Cross-Functional Platform Strategy: Collaborate with product managers, architects, fellow engineering leaders, and business stakeholders to drive end-to-end solutions that balance developer experience with business outcomes. Participate in architectural decisions that impact multiple teams and ensure the platform evolves to serve diverse product requirements while maintaining consistency and maintainability.
  • Engineering Excellence & Process Improvement: Contribute to and champion improvements in engineering processes, development standards, and technical practices across AppEx. Establish developer tooling best practices that enable engineers to move fast while maintaining code safety and system reliability. Lead by example in applying AI-native thinking to solve engineering challenges and accelerate delivery.
  • Technical Leadership & Mentoring: Provide technical mentorship and guidance to senior and junior engineers, fostering a culture of excellence and continuous learning. Share deep expertise in distributed systems, AI/LLM applications, and enterprise-grade build infrastructure. Coach teams through complex technical decisions and help develop the next generation of platform engineers and technical leaders.
  • Developer Tooling & Infrastructure Maintenance: Own the serving layer powering Snowsight and UX features, ensuring high performance and reliability. Maintain and evolve CI pipelines and testing validation platforms that support rapid iteration while preserving code and product quality. Continuously evaluate emerging technologies and methodologies to keep infrastructure competitive and future-proof.

Qualifications

What we look for.

Technical

  • Enterprise-Grade Build Systems

    Extensive hands-on experience designing, building, or maintaining large-scale build systems serving hundreds or thousands of engineers. Deep understanding of CI/CD automation, build optimization, caching strategies, and distributing compilation across clusters to minimize developer wait times.

  • Distributed Systems Architecture

    Strong computer science fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, and distributed systems design. Proven ability to architect systems handling high concurrency, eventual consistency, and graceful degradation. Experience with system design tradeoffs including latency, throughput, consistency, and availability.

  • AI and LLM Application Development

    Experience with or demonstrated strong interest in AI/LLM-based applications including agent architectures, prompt engineering and optimization, tool/function calling patterns, evaluation frameworks, and productionized AI features. Understanding of challenges in deploying AI systems at scale including cost optimization, latency management, and quality assurance.

  • Platform Engineering & Developer Infrastructure

    Demonstrated expertise building tools and platforms that make developers highly productive. Experience designing APIs and abstractions that simplify complex infrastructure for product engineers. Understanding of developer experience principles including ease of adoption, self-service capabilities, and clear documentation.

  • Programming Language Proficiency

    Professional fluency in Go, Java, or Python with ability to write clean, maintainable code at scale. Comfortable reading and contributing to large codebases. Experience with language-specific tooling, performance profiling, and ecosystem management.

  • Observability & Monitoring Systems

    Experience designing and implementing comprehensive observability solutions including metrics collection, distributed tracing, and structured logging. Understanding of SLO definition, error budgeting, and how to create feedback loops that drive system improvements. Familiarity with tools like Prometheus, Datadog, or similar monitoring platforms.

Education

  • Computer Science Foundation

    Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent professional experience demonstrating strong computer science fundamentals and ability to architect complex systems.

Experience

  • Senior Software Engineering Experience

    Minimum 12+ years of professional software engineering experience developing tools and infrastructure for large codebases and complex systems. Demonstrated progression to senior technical roles with scope spanning multiple teams or significant architectural decisions.

  • Leadership & Influence at Scale

    Track record of driving technical strategy and influencing outcomes across multiple teams or organizations. Experience mentoring and developing senior engineers. Demonstrated ability to balance technical excellence with business priorities and effectively communicate complex concepts to executives and stakeholders.

  • Mission-Critical System Ownership

    Experience owning or leading development of systems that directly impact user experience and company revenue. Proven ability to maintain system reliability while driving innovation and pushing the boundaries of what's possible in platform architecture.

Skills

Required

  • Go Programming

    Professional proficiency in Go with experience building high-performance, concurrent systems and microservices. Ability to write idiomatic Go and leverage goroutines and channels effectively.

  • Java Development

    Deep experience building enterprise Java applications and services. Proficiency with Java ecosystem tools, frameworks, and performance optimization techniques for large-scale systems.

  • Python Engineering

    Strong Python development skills with experience in backend systems, data processing, and scripting for infrastructure automation. Familiarity with Python ecosystem for systems development and ML integration.

  • Distributed Systems Design

    Expert-level understanding of distributed systems principles including consistency models, fault tolerance, replication, and consensus protocols. Ability to evaluate tradeoffs and make principled architecture decisions.

  • API Design & Architecture

    Ability to design clean, intuitive APIs that abstract complexity and make platforms easy to adopt. Experience with REST, gRPC, or other API paradigms and versioning strategies for evolving systems.

  • System Reliability Engineering

    Deep expertise in designing reliable systems including observability, alerting, incident response, and SLO definition. Understanding of chaos engineering principles and testing strategies for production systems.

  • Problem Solving & CS Fundamentals

    Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills. Deep understanding of fundamental computer science concepts including data structures, algorithm analysis, complexity theory, and system design patterns.

  • Technical Communication

    Excellent written and oral communication skills with ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly to diverse audiences. Outstanding English language proficiency for documentation, proposals, and presentations.

  • Collaborative Leadership

    Proven ability to work effectively in team environments, build consensus, and mentor junior engineers. Low ego, collaborative approach to problem solving with strong interpersonal skills and strategic thinking about prioritization.

Preferred

  • LLM & Generative AI Experience

    Nice to have

    Hands-on experience integrating large language models into production systems. Knowledge of prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), fine-tuning approaches, or building AI agents. Understanding of evaluation frameworks for AI systems.

  • Agent Architecture & Agentic Systems

    Nice to have

    Experience designing and building AI agents with tool calling, multi-step reasoning, and autonomous decision-making capabilities. Understanding of agent frameworks and patterns for reliable, scalable agentic systems.

  • Observability & Monitoring Platforms

    Nice to have

    Experience designing and operating observability infrastructure including metrics, traces, and logs. Familiarity with platforms like Prometheus, Datadog, ELK stack, or similar. Understanding of SLO-driven engineering practices.

  • Build System Development

    Nice to have

    Deep experience developing or significantly contributing to enterprise build systems like Bazel, Buck, or Gradle. Understanding of compilation caching, distributed builds, and optimization for developer productivity.

  • Frontend Infrastructure

    Nice to have

    Experience building frontend infrastructure, component libraries, or developer tools that power modern web applications. Knowledge of frontend performance optimization and developer experience for UI engineering.

  • Cloud Platform Architecture

    Nice to have

    Experience architecting systems on cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) with understanding of serverless computing, containerization, and cloud-native design patterns for scalability and cost efficiency.

  • Testing & Validation Infrastructure

    Nice to have

    Experience designing testing platforms, continuous integration systems, or automated validation frameworks. Understanding of test organization, flakiness remediation, and balancing test coverage with developer velocity.

Tech stack

Languages

GoJavaPythonTypeScript/JavaScript

Frameworks

ReactgRPCREST APIsLLM Frameworks

Databases

Snowflake Data PlatformPostgreSQLKey-Value Stores

Tools

KubernetesBazel or Similar Build SystemsDockerCI/CD PlatformsGitTerraform/IaC

Other

Observability & MonitoringDistributed TracingStructured LoggingAI/LLM IntegrationDevelopment Environment Tools

Compensation

Pay and benefits.

Base·USD 236,000 – 339,200

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.

About the Team

The Apps & Experiences (AppEx) organization powers the unified user experience (Snowsight) for Snowflake. Every major Snowflake customer interacts with our platform through these surfaces, making AppEx central to both customer satisfaction and revenue growth.

Within Appex, our team sits at the intersection of AI, platform, and user experience. We are on a mission to create an AI‑first, scalable, maintainable, and extensible platform to build all Snowflake user experience features. The team owns:

  • The serving layer that powers Snowsight, Snowflake CoWork, and UX features

  • Developer tooling that enable our engineers to move fast and deliver

  • Frontend infrastructure and shared services for product teams

  • CI pipelines that ensure fast and reliable builds

  • Testing and validation platform that maintains code and product quality

  • The monitoring and logging stack that ensures observability and trust

What You Will Do

As a software engineer on the team, you will play a central role in delivering the next generation of tools and evolve our developer infrastructure and tooling to be scalable, highly performant, and AI-first.

  • Design and build AI-first platforms, tools, and best practices to significantly enhance the developer experience for Snowsight

  • Drive strategy and initiatives to improve agentic development workflows and build infrastructure to support 10x increases in developer productivity

  • Improve platform reliability by investing in observability, alerting, SLOs, and automated remediation across our systems.

  • Collaborate with product managers, architects, other engineering teams, and business groups, to drive end-to-end solutions.

  • Contribute to improving our engineering processes, tooling, and standards.

What We’re Looking For

Our ideal Staff Software Engineer will have:

  • Strong passion for making developers highly productive.

  • 12+ years industry experience developing tools for large codebases.

  • Passion for AI-first processes and for building platforms that enable many teams to move faster while keeping systems maintainable and safe.

  • Experience with or strong interest in AI or LLM-based applications (agents, prompt/tool engineering, evals, or productionized AI features)

  • Experience working on enterprise-grade build systems.

  • Excellent problem solving skills, and strong CS fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, and distributed systems.

  • Fluency in Go, Java, or Python.

  • Ability to work in a team environment, collaborate well, and mentor junior engineers.

  • A strategic mindset and strong sense of what to prioritize for maximum impact.

  • Excellent interpersonal communication skills.

  • Outstanding written and oral English language skills

  • Ability to work on-site at our Bellevue, WA or Menlo Park, CA offices.

If you’re excited about building the platform and AI systems that power how the world’s largest companies experience Snowflake, we’d love to hear from you.

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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