# Principal Software Engineer 2 - OLTP
**Company:** [Snowflake](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/snowflake)
Principal Software Engineer 2 - OLTP is a staff-level architecture role at Snowflake leading the design and development of next-generation transactional database systems. This position requires deep expertise in OLTP systems, distributed database architecture, cloud infrastructure, and 15+ years of experience building large-scale database or infrastructure systems. The role involves architecting transactional systems optimized for agent-driven workloads while integrating with Snowflake's cloud-native data platform.
**Role:** Principal Engineer
**Seniority:** Principal
**Locations:** US-CA-Menlo Park
**Salary:** 304000–380000 USD
[Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/snowflake/b81e83f8-ad8e-420a-b8dd-2c4c919d8777)
Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/snowflake/principal-software-engineer-2-oltp
---
## Responsibilities

- Define and Drive Long-Term Technical Architecture: Establish comprehensive technical direction for OLTP systems across Snowflake Postgres, Unistore, and underlying cloud infrastructure, making strategic decisions that shape product direction for years to come.
- Lead Architectural Decision-Making: Make critical architectural choices across transactions, storage engines, concurrency control, replication, recovery mechanisms, query execution strategies, and database scalability to optimize for agent-driven workloads.
- Design Compute and Storage Infrastructure: Engineer low-latency, highly available transactional systems with optimized resource isolation, elasticity, networking, caching strategies, and container infrastructure to support rapid operational requirements.
- Build Agent-Optimized Database Primitives: Develop specialized database capabilities for autonomous agent workloads, including fast isolated transactional environment creation, checkpointing, rollback mechanisms, and efficient lifecycle management.
- Design Safe Agent State Management: Architect secure mechanisms for agents to read and modify operational state with strong consistency guarantees, recovery assurances, access control policies, and governance frameworks.
- Evaluate PostgreSQL Architecture and Innovation: Assess where PostgreSQL architecture provides strategic advantage versus where novel approaches deliver superior performance and capabilities for Snowflake's specific use cases.
- Design for Programmatic Database Operations: Create systems architecture enabling databases and transactional environments to be created, provisioned, and operated at machine speed through programmatic interfaces rather than manual administration.
- Lead Cross-Organizational Engineering Efforts: Direct complex, multi-team technical initiatives, establishing technical standards and strategic direction across multiple engineering organizations and product areas.
- Collaborate with Leadership and Customers: Work closely with product leaders, senior engineering executives, and strategic enterprise customers on critical technical decisions and product roadmap planning.
- Raise Technical Excellence Standards: Elevate engineering quality through architecture reviews, technical mentoring, and hands-on involvement in solving the organization's most challenging systems problems.

## Requirements

### education

- {"name":"Computer Science or Related Field","description":"Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent practical experience demonstrating mastery of computer systems fundamentals."}
- {"name":"Advanced Systems Knowledge","description":"Evidence of continued advanced education through professional development, published technical work, open-source contributions, or architectural documentation."}

### technical

- {"name":"Systems Programming","description":"Strong systems programming capability with preferred experience in C, C++, or Rust for performance-critical infrastructure development."}
- {"name":"Distributed Systems Architecture","description":"Comprehensive understanding of distributed system design patterns, consensus protocols, replication strategies, and fault tolerance mechanisms."}
- {"name":"Transaction Processing","description":"Advanced knowledge of transaction semantics, isolation levels (ACID properties), MVCC (Multi-Version Concurrency Control), and conflict resolution strategies."}
- {"name":"Query Execution and Optimization","description":"Expertise in query planning, execution engines, indexing strategies, cost-based optimization, and performance profiling for analytical and transactional workloads."}
- {"name":"Storage Engine Design","description":"Deep understanding of storage layer architecture, buffer management, compression techniques, WAL (Write-Ahead Logging), and persistent data structure optimization."}
- {"name":"Concurrency Control Mechanisms","description":"Advanced knowledge of locking strategies, optimistic concurrency control, timestamp-based ordering, and contention resolution in multi-threaded database systems."}
- {"name":"Database Recovery and High Availability","description":"Expertise in crash recovery algorithms, log-based recovery, replication topologies, failover mechanisms, and ensuring durability guarantees."}

### experience

- {"name":"Database and Distributed Systems Experience","description":"15+ years building databases, distributed systems, storage systems, or large-scale cloud infrastructure with demonstrated sustained impact at significant technical scope and scale."}
- {"name":"OLTP and Database Systems Expertise","description":"Deep technical proficiency in OLTP systems with specialized knowledge across transactions, concurrency control, storage engines, indexing, query processing, replication, recovery, and high availability patterns."}
- {"name":"Cloud Infrastructure Knowledge","description":"Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure architecture for low-latency stateful systems, including compute optimization, storage strategies, networking, resource isolation, and failure handling."}
- {"name":"Elastic Multi-Tenant Systems Design","description":"Proven experience designing highly elastic, multi-tenant, or rapidly provisioned stateful systems where isolation boundaries and efficient lifecycle management are fundamental architectural concerns."}
- {"name":"AI and Agent System Architecture","description":"Strong instincts for how database architecture must evolve to support AI-native applications and autonomous agents, including ephemeral state management, sandboxing, safe transactional actions, and programmatic lifecycle control."}
- {"name":"Architectural Trade-off Analysis","description":"Track record of making difficult architectural decisions balancing latency, throughput, consistency, availability, durability, scalability, isolation, and cost considerations."}
- {"name":"Production Systems at Scale","description":"Documented history of taking technically ambitious systems from architecture and design through successful production deployment at meaningful scale."}
- {"name":"Technical Leadership and Influence","description":"Demonstrated ability to influence and establish technical direction across multiple teams or broad product areas, with clear examples of technical leadership impact."}
- {"name":"PostgreSQL Expertise","description":"Deep PostgreSQL knowledge representing a significant advantage, or equivalent expertise building other sophisticated transactional or distributed database systems."}

## Skills

### required

- {"name":"Database Architecture Design","description":"Strategic ability to design complete database systems balancing performance, scalability, reliability, and developer experience across multiple layers of the stack."}
- {"name":"Systems Engineering","description":"Ability to work effectively across multiple abstraction levels from low-level database internals through distributed infrastructure, understanding interdependencies and optimization opportunities."}
- {"name":"Technical Communication","description":"Exceptional ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to engineers, executives, and customers, influencing decisions through articulate technical reasoning."}
- {"name":"OLTP Systems Expertise","description":"Deep knowledge of Online Transaction Processing systems, including concurrency control, indexing, query optimization, and low-latency response requirements."}
- {"name":"Distributed Systems Design","description":"Proficiency designing highly reliable distributed systems with clear understanding of consistency models, partition tolerance, replication strategies, and failure recovery."}
- {"name":"Technical Leadership and Mentorship","description":"Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical initiatives, mentor engineers, establish technical standards, and influence product direction across organizational boundaries."}
- {"name":"Cloud Infrastructure Architecture","description":"Deep understanding of cloud-native systems design, container orchestration, resource isolation, auto-scaling, and infrastructure-as-code principles."}
- {"name":"Architectural Trade-off Analysis","description":"Expert judgment in evaluating and making difficult architectural decisions considering latency, throughput, consistency, availability, scalability, and cost implications."}

### preferred

- {"name":"PostgreSQL Internals","description":"Specialized knowledge of PostgreSQL architecture, query planning, storage format, concurrency mechanisms, and extension points for custom functionality."}
- {"name":"Machine Learning and Agent Systems","description":"Understanding of ML/AI system requirements, autonomous agent architecture, state management for agents, and integration patterns with data platforms."}
- {"name":"Multi-Tenant Database Systems","description":"Experience designing databases that serve multiple tenants with strong isolation guarantees, resource quotas, and efficient data separation strategies."}
- {"name":"Programmatic Infrastructure","description":"Experience designing systems intended for programmatic control and operation at scale, including API-first design and machine-driven provisioning."}
- {"name":"Rust Systems Programming","description":"Proficiency in Rust for systems programming, understanding of memory safety guarantees, and experience with Rust for performance-critical infrastructure."}
- {"name":"Open Source Contributions","description":"Active involvement in open-source database or infrastructure projects, demonstrating commitment to the engineering community and collaborative development."}
- {"name":"Published Technical Work","description":"Published papers, technical blogs, conference presentations, or architectural documentation demonstrating thought leadership in database systems or distributed infrastructure."}
- {"name":"Enterprise Data Platform Experience","description":"Background working on enterprise-scale data platforms integrating analytics, governance, and operational capabilities across diverse workloads."}

## Tech stack

### tools

### others

### databases

### languages

### frameworks

## Benefits

### benefits

- {"name":"Comprehensive Health Coverage","description":"Medical, dental, and vision insurance plans with options to cover employee and family members, supporting overall wellness and preventative care."}
- {"name":"Retirement Planning","description":"401(k) retirement savings plan with employer matching contributions, helping engineers build long-term financial security."}
- {"name":"Equity and Stock Options","description":"Competitive equity grants as part of total compensation package, allowing participation in Snowflake's continued growth and success as a public company."}
- {"name":"Flexible Time Off","description":"Generous paid time off policy with flexibility to manage personal needs, vacation, and work-life balance effectively."}
- {"name":"Professional Development","description":"Opportunities for continuous learning through training programs, conference attendance, technical certifications, and access to advanced professional development resources."}
- {"name":"Wellness Programs","description":"Comprehensive wellness initiatives including fitness benefits, mental health support, nutrition programs, and resources for maintaining physical and mental well-being."}
- {"name":"Parental Leave","description":"Competitive parental leave benefits supporting work-life integration for employees welcoming new family members."}
- {"name":"Home Office Support","description":"Resources and equipment allowances for setting up productive home office environments, supporting flexible and remote work arrangements."}

## Compensation

- **max:** 350000
- **min:** 270000
- **currency:** USD
- **stockOptions:** true

## Interview process

### steps

## Full description
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.

## Principal Software Engineer 2 - OLTP

Snowflake is building the next generation of transactional systems for applications, AI and agents. Across Snowflake Postgres and Unistore, we are combining the performance, reliability and developer experience expected from modern operational databases with Snowflake's cloud-native architecture and governed data platform.

We're looking for a Principal Engineer 2 to help define and drive the architecture across database internals, storage, compute and cloud infrastructure. A core part of the role is designing transactional systems for agent-driven workloads, where isolated state, rapid database lifecycle, safe autonomous operations, and deep integration with enterprise data are first-class requirements.

### What You'll Do

* Define and drive the long-term technical architecture for OLTP across Snowflake Postgres, Unistore and the infrastructure they depend on.
* Lead major architectural decisions across transactions, storage, concurrency control, replication, recovery, query execution and database scalability.
* Shape the compute and storage architecture for low-latency, highly available transactional systems, including resource isolation, elasticity, networking, caching and container infrastructure.
* Build database primitives for agent-driven workloads, including fast creation of isolated transactional environments, checkpointing and rollback, and efficient lifecycle management.
* Define how agents safely read and modify operational state, with strong guarantees around consistency, recovery, access control and governance.
* Determine where PostgreSQL architecture and compatibility provide leverage and where alternative approaches can deliver meaningful advantages.
* Design for workloads where databases and transactional environments are created and operated programmatically at machine speed rather than primarily through human administration.
* Lead complex, cross-organizational engineering efforts and establish technical direction across multiple teams.
* Work closely with product leaders, senior engineering leadership, and strategic customers on the most important technical and product decisions.
* Raise the technical bar through architecture reviews, mentoring and hands-on leadership on the hardest systems problems.

### What We're Looking For

* 15+ years of experience building databases, distributed systems, storage systems or large-scale cloud infrastructure, with sustained impact at significant technical scope.
* Deep expertise in OLTP and database systems, including areas such as transactions, concurrency control, storage engines, indexing, query processing, replication, recovery and high availability.
* Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure for low-latency stateful systems, including compute, storage, networking, resource isolation and failure handling.
* Experience designing highly elastic, multi-tenant, or rapidly provisioned stateful systems where isolation and efficient lifecycle management are first-class concerns.
* Strong instincts for how database architecture should evolve for AI-native applications and autonomous agents, including ephemeral state, sandboxing, safe transactional actions and programmatic database lifecycle.
* Experience making difficult architectural tradeoffs across latency, throughput, consistency, availability, durability, scalability, isolation and cost.
* A track record of taking technically ambitious systems from architecture through production at meaningful scale.
* Experience influencing technical direction across multiple teams or a broad product area.
* Strong systems engineering instincts and the ability to work across abstractions, from database internals to distributed infrastructure.
* Deep PostgreSQL expertise is a strong advantage, but experience building other sophisticated transactional or distributed database systems is equally relevant.
* Strong systems programming experience; C, C++, or Rust experience is a plus.
* Exceptional technical judgment and communication skills, including the ability to influence engineers, executives and customers.

### Why Join Snowflake Engineering

* Define the architecture of a major expansion of Snowflake into transactional and operational workloads.
* Work on fundamental database and distributed-systems problems spanning transactions, storage, compute and cloud infrastructure.
* Build transactional systems designed for a new generation of applications and agents.
* Influence Snowflake Postgres, Unistore and how transactional systems integrate with Snowflake's broader Data & AI platform.
* Have technical impact at a scope where architectural decisions can shape Snowflake's product direction for years.

_Every Snowflake employee is expected to follow the company’s confidentiality and security standards for handling sensitive data. Snowflake employees must abide by the company’s data security plan as an essential part of their duties. It is every employee's duty to keep customer information secure and confidential._

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](http://careers.snowflake.com)