# Senior Director of Engineering – Horizon Catalog, Collaboration & Marketplace
**Company:** [Snowflake](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/snowflake)
Lead Snowflake's Horizon Catalog, Data Collaboration, and Marketplace engineering organization as Senior Director of Engineering. You'll architect planet-scale distributed systems for data governance, secure sharing, and AI-native marketplace capabilities while building and mentoring world-class engineering teams across multiple hubs. This role combines deep distributed systems expertise with strong product acumen to drive enterprise adoption of Snowflake's AI Data Cloud platform.
**Role:** Engineering Director
**Seniority:** Director
**Locations:** US-CA-Menlo Park
**Salary:** 340000–488700 USD
[Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/snowflake/35026637-d96b-47b3-a154-96e31765a7aa)
Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/snowflake/senior-director-of-engineering-horizon-catalog-collaboration-marketplace
---
## Responsibilities

- Lead Mission-Critical Engineering Organization: Build, mentor, and inspire a world-class engineering organization including Engineering Directors, Senior Engineering Managers, and Principal Engineers across multiple hubs. Foster an inclusive, high-ownership engineering culture focused on talent attraction, retention, and elite engineer development.
- Architecture and Strategy for Horizon Catalog & Metadata: Design and oversee agentic experiences for exploring and understanding enterprise data estates. Lead development of governance capabilities including data-quality monitoring, automated lineage tracking, schema validation, and integration with open standards such as Apache Polaris and Iceberg REST catalog APIs.
- Scale Collaboration & Marketplace Platforms: Architect and evolve platforms enabling secure data sharing, zero-copy integrations, Native Apps, Data Clean Rooms, and Snowflake Marketplace. Drive technology that connects thousands of organizations to securely share, distribute, and monetize data, applications, and AI products across clouds and regions.
- Build Enterprise Administration & Control Planes: Architect administrative tooling, tenant management systems, and centralized policy orchestration enabling enterprises to manage Snowflake deployments across hundreds of accounts and global regions. Ensure fool-proof, scalable controls for complex multi-cloud environments.
- Data Quality and Governance Systems Architecture: Spearhead architecture for native data quality monitoring, automated data profiling, real-time anomaly detection, and alerts that catch data corruption or drift before impacting downstream BI dashboards or AI models. Implement data-quality frameworks and privacy controls including PII detection and masking.
- Drive Cross-Functional Product Alignment: Collaborate closely with Product Management, Design, Security, and Data teams to translate enterprise customer pain points into high-velocity execution roadmaps. Ensure technical architecture decisions support product adoption and customer experience excellence.
- Executive Customer & Operational Leadership: Serve as executive sponsor for tier-1 enterprise customers. Champion operational excellence, security-by-design principles, and 99.99%+ platform availability across AWS, Azure, and GCP deployments. Lead incident response and technical escalations for mission-critical systems.
- Distributed Systems Engineering Excellence: Oversee development of planet-scale backend distributed systems including high-throughput metadata storage, query execution engines, intelligent caching layers, and cross-region replication strategies. Ensure technical resilience and economic efficiency in system design.

## Requirements

### education

- {"name":"Computer Science Degree","description":"B.S. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical field"}
- {"name":"Advanced Technical Degree (Preferred)","description":"M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical discipline"}
- {"name":"Equivalent Practical Experience","description":"Equivalent professional software engineering experience demonstrating mastery of distributed systems, software architecture, and engineering leadership if formal degree not completed"}

### technical

- {"name":"Distributed Systems Architecture","description":"Strong foundation in designing and operating cloud-native distributed systems at scale, including expertise in high-throughput metadata storage, query execution engines, caching layers (Redis, memcached), and cross-region replication with eventual consistency patterns."}
- {"name":"Data Governance & Catalog Systems","description":"Deep knowledge of metadata management, data lineage tracking, automated data profiling, schema validation, and data classification frameworks. Experience with governance frameworks addressing compliance requirements (GDPR, HIPAA, SOX) and data privacy controls."}
- {"name":"Multi-Cloud Platform Operations","description":"Extensive experience architecting and operating systems natively deployed across multiple public clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP) with region isolation, cross-cloud replication, and cloud-agnostic service abstractions."}
- {"name":"Enterprise Software Architecture","description":"Proven expertise architecting complex enterprise systems including tenant management, access control, policy orchestration, and administrative control planes. Understanding of enterprise security requirements, compliance frameworks, and audit capabilities."}
- {"name":"Open Source Data Systems","description":"Familiarity with modern open lakehouse catalog engines and data formats including Apache Iceberg, Apache Polaris, Unity Catalog, Hive Metastore, and Delta Lake. Knowledge of REST API design and integration patterns for catalog systems."}

### experience

- {"name":"Senior Software Engineering Experience","description":"15+ years of software engineering experience in product infrastructure, distributed systems engineering, enterprise cloud platforms, or data systems. Track record of designing and shipping systems at scale used by thousands of organizations globally."}
- {"name":"Engineering Leadership at Scale","description":"7+ years managing engineering directors, managers, and senior engineering leaders across multi-team organizations. Demonstrated ability to build high-performance, inclusive engineering cultures and scale engineering organizations through multiple growth phases."}
- {"name":"Product-Minded Leadership","description":"Proven ability to deeply understand customer workflows, enterprise personas, and usability. Track record of making technical architecture decisions that directly improve product adoption and customer outcomes."}
- {"name":"Executive Communication","description":"Exceptional ability to articulate complex technical architectures, engineering trade-offs, and product strategies to VP and C-level leaders. Experience presenting to enterprise customers and translating technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders."}

## Skills

### required

- {"name":"Distributed Systems Design","description":"Deep expertise designing distributed systems handling massive scale including consistency models, replication strategies, failure handling, and performance optimization"}
- {"name":"Engineering Team Leadership","description":"Proven ability to hire, mentor, and develop engineering talent while fostering inclusive culture and high-ownership mindset across large, geographically distributed teams"}
- {"name":"Technical Product Strategy","description":"Strong ability to translate customer needs and market opportunities into technical roadmaps and product strategy aligned with business objectives"}
- {"name":"Cloud Infrastructure Expertise","description":"Hands-on knowledge of cloud services, multi-cloud architectures, containerization, orchestration, and DevOps practices across AWS, Azure, and GCP"}
- {"name":"Enterprise Systems Architecture","description":"Experience architecting scalable, secure, and reliable systems for enterprise environments including multi-tenancy, access control, and compliance considerations"}
- {"name":"Data Systems Knowledge","description":"Understanding of modern data platforms, SQL query execution, metadata management, data pipelines, and analytics architectures"}
- {"name":"Cross-Functional Collaboration","description":"Demonstrated excellence working with Product, Design, Security, and other functions to drive cohesive solutions and align on priorities"}

### preferred

- {"name":"Data Governance Frameworks","description":"Prior hands-on experience implementing data governance solutions including metadata management, lineage tracking, PII detection, and data masking technologies"}
- {"name":"Apache Iceberg & Polaris","description":"Experience building or operating open lakehouse catalog engines, particularly Apache Iceberg, Apache Polaris, or similar modern data catalog systems"}
- {"name":"Secure Data Sharing & Privacy Technology","description":"Background with privacy-preserving collaboration platforms, data clean rooms, secure computation, differential privacy, or similar privacy-enhancing technologies"}
- {"name":"Application Distribution & Marketplace Platforms","description":"Experience building or operating app distribution platforms, digital marketplaces, or commerce systems connecting providers and consumers at scale"}
- {"name":"Data Warehouse or Analytics Platform Engineering","description":"Background in designing query engines, optimization, caching strategies, or metadata systems for data warehouses or analytics platforms"}
- {"name":"Open Source Project Leadership","description":"Experience maintaining, contributing to, or building on top of significant open-source data projects and communities"}

## Tech stack

### tools

- {"name":"AWS Services","description":"EC2, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, and other AWS managed services for multi-cloud data platform infrastructure"}
- {"name":"Azure Services","description":"Azure Compute, Blob Storage, SQL Database for cross-cloud operational deployment and redundancy"}
- {"name":"Google Cloud Platform","description":"Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery integration for multi-cloud strategy and customer deployments"}
- {"name":"Terraform & Infrastructure as Code","description":"Infrastructure provisioning and management across multiple clouds with configuration management"}
- {"name":"Prometheus & Grafana","description":"Distributed monitoring, metrics collection, and observability stack for large-scale system reliability"}

### others

- {"name":"Data Governance & Compliance","description":"Implementation of governance frameworks addressing GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, and other regulatory requirements"}
- {"name":"API Design & REST Architectures","description":"RESTful API design patterns, OpenAPI specifications, and integration patterns for ecosystem extensions"}
- {"name":"Security & Encryption","description":"End-to-end encryption, key management, authentication protocols, and security-by-design principles"}
- {"name":"Distributed Tracing & Observability","description":"Jaeger, OpenTelemetry for distributed system observability, debugging, and performance optimization"}

### databases

- {"name":"PostgreSQL","description":"Relational database for metadata storage, governance policies, and administrative state management"}
- {"name":"Apache Cassandra","description":"Distributed NoSQL database for high-throughput, eventually-consistent metadata and telemetry storage"}
- {"name":"Redis","description":"In-memory caching layer for high-performance metadata access and distributed coordination"}
- {"name":"Snowflake","description":"Cloud data warehouse platform that team operates and extends with new governance and collaboration capabilities"}

### languages

- {"name":"Java","description":"Primary backend language for distributed systems and metadata services at Snowflake scale"}
- {"name":"Python","description":"Used for data pipelines, analytics, automation scripts, and AI/ML integrations within data platforms"}
- {"name":"Rust","description":"Performance-critical components including query execution engines and data processing systems"}
- {"name":"SQL","description":"Essential for data manipulation, query optimization, and governance policy expression in data platforms"}

### frameworks

- {"name":"Apache Spark","description":"Distributed data processing framework for large-scale data transformations and analytics"}
- {"name":"Apache Iceberg","description":"Open lakehouse table format supporting data governance, schema evolution, and time travel queries"}
- {"name":"Spring Framework","description":"Common framework for building scalable Java microservices and enterprise applications"}
- {"name":"Kubernetes","description":"Container orchestration platform for managing distributed systems and microservices deployments"}

## Benefits

### benefits

- {"name":"Equity & Stock Options","description":"Significant equity stake in Snowflake with opportunities for appreciation as a publicly-traded, high-growth cloud company"}
- {"name":"Comprehensive Health Coverage","description":"Medical, dental, and vision insurance with competitive coverage for employees and dependents"}
- {"name":"Retirement Planning","description":"401(k) matching program with competitive company contribution enabling long-term financial planning"}
- {"name":"Flexible Work Arrangements","description":"Flexibility in work location and schedule supporting work-life balance for engineering leaders"}
- {"name":"Professional Development","description":"Learning and development budget, conference attendance, and executive coaching opportunities to support continuous growth"}
- {"name":"Paid Time Off","description":"Generous vacation, sick leave, and sabbatical policies supporting employee wellness and burnout prevention"}
- {"name":"Life & Disability Insurance","description":"Company-paid life insurance and short/long-term disability coverage providing financial security"}

## Compensation

- **max:** 350000
- **min:** 250000
- **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.

Snowflake makes enterprise AI and data simple, secure, and scalable. Thousands of organizations worldwide rely on Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud to store, query, govern, and build intelligent applications on their most critical assets. As enterprises scale their data footprints and deploy autonomous AI agents, having high-quality, trusted, easily administered, and well-governed data has become foundational to enterprise survival and growth.

We are seeking an engineering executive to serve as the **Senior Director of Engineering for Horizon Catalog, Collaboration (Data Sharing, Native Apps, Zero Copy, Data Clean Rooms), and Snowflake Marketplace.**

This team brings together two pillars of the AI Data Cloud: Snowflake Horizon, the native governance, catalog, quality, and privacy engine, and Collaboration & Marketplace, the platforms that let organizations securely share, distribute, and monetize data, applications, and AI products. This engineering leadership role sits at a unique intersection: building planet-scale backend distributed systems while bringing deep product sensibility to the enterprise admin and data steward experience.

**In this role, you will lead an engineering organization responsible for:**

**1\. Horizon Catalog & Metadata:** Building agentic experiences for exploring/understanding all the data estate and expressing governance intent, governance capabilities like data-quality monitoring and lineage tracking and integration with open standards (such as Apache Polaris / Iceberg REST catalog).

2\. **Collaboration & Marketplace**: Building the sharing, application, and commerce platforms (Secure Data Sharing, Zero Copy, Native Apps, Data Clean Rooms, and Snowflake Marketplace) that connect providers and consumers across organizations, clouds, and regions.

3\. **Managing data context:** Building capabilities like search and business ontology to help both humans and agents understand the semantics of their data.

## What You Will Do

* **Lead a Mission-Critical Organization:** Build, mentor, and inspire a world-class engineering organization including Engineering Directors, Senior Engineering Managers, and Principal Engineers across multiple hubs.
* **Bridge Engineering Depth with Product Intuition:** Combine world-class distributed systems engineering with sharp product understanding ensuring the capabilities your team builds are technically resilient, economically efficient, and intuitively packaged for the enterprise administrator and data engineer.
* **Build Next-Gen Data Quality Systems:** Spearhead the architecture for native data quality monitoring, automated data profiling, schema validation, and real-time alerts that catch data corruption or drift before it impacts downstream BI dashboards or AI models.
* **Power Enterprise Administration & Control:** Architect administrative tooling, tenant management control planes, and centralized policy orchestration that make managing Snowflake across hundreds of accounts and global regions simple and foolproof.
* **Scale Collaboration & Marketplace:** Lead the platforms behind secure data sharing, zero-copy partner integrations, Data Clean Rooms, and Snowflake Marketplace, the network that lets thousands of organizations share and monetize data, applications, and AI products across clouds and regions.
* **Drive Cross-Functional Alignment:** Collaborate closely with Product Management (PM), Design, and Security leaders to translate enterprise customer pain points into high-velocity execution roadmaps.
* **Customer & Operational Leadership:** Serve as an executive sponsor for tier-1 enterprise customers; champion operational excellence, security-by-design, and 99.99%+ availability across AWS, Azure, and GCP.

## Qualifications

* **Experience:** 15+ years of software engineering experience in product infrastructure, distributed systems, or enterprise cloud platforms, including 7+ years managing engineering directors, managers, and senior leaders across multi-team organizations.
* **Product-Minded Engineering Leadership:** Strong technical product acumen: you don't just build infrastructure in a vacuum. You deeply understand customer workflows, the enterprise admin persona, usability, and how technical architecture drives product adoption.
* **Distributed Systems at Scale:** Strong foundation in cloud-native distributed systems, high-throughput metadata storage, query execution, caching layers, and cross-region replication.
* **Organizational Excellence:** Proven ability to attract, hire, retain, and develop elite engineering talent; adept at fostering an inclusive, high-ownership engineering culture.
* **Executive Communication:** Exceptional ability to articulate complex technical architectures, trade-offs, and product strategies to VP/C-level leaders and enterprise customers.
* **Education:** B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

## Preferred Qualifications

* Data Governance Depth**:** Prior experience with data governance frameworks, metadata management, automated lineage tracking, data classification (PII), or data masking/privacy controls.
* Experience building or operating open lakehouse catalog engines (Apache Iceberg, Apache Polaris, Unity Catalog, or Hive Metastore).
* Experience with secure data sharing, privacy-preserving collaboration (data clean rooms), application distribution platforms, or data/app marketplaces and commerce systems.
* Experience architecting systems deployed natively across multiple public clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP).

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)