Senior Manager - Engineering Systems AI Developer Experience
Manager · Manager · Full Time
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Role
What you'll do.
Lead Snowflake's Engineering Systems AI Developer Experience team as a Senior Manager, driving the transformation of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) for the AI era. In this strategic role, you'll manage a high-performing engineering team focused on reinventing how code is written, reviewed, and deployed at scale, while leveraging AI as a core accelerator for developer velocity and productivity across the organization.
Responsibilities
- Team Leadership and Development: Lead, coach, and mentor a growing team of engineers working on AI-powered developer experience solutions. Build a high-energy, cohesive environment with strong planning, ownership, and structured career development pathways. Foster a culture of excellence while maintaining operational health and team satisfaction.
- SDLC Transformation and Roadmap: Define and deliver the vision for transforming Snowflake's software development lifecycle to embrace AI-native workflows and agentic coding paradigms. Develop and execute a comprehensive roadmap that positions AI as the core source of context for engineering decisions and enables engineers to deliver through intent and direction.
- Developer Productivity Optimization: Drive measurable improvements in code review latency, reduce friction in the development workflow, and establish golden paths for modern, agentic-driven development. Ensure Snowflake engineers have access to the latest AI models, testing harnesses, and developer tooling that accelerates shipping and quality.
- Industry Leadership and Decision Making: Act as an agent of clarity in a rapidly evolving AI and developer tools landscape. Stay current with the latest industry developments in AI-assisted engineering, developer productivity platforms, and modern CI/testing infrastructure. Make high-quality strategic decisions quickly while maintaining architectural soundness.
- Operational Excellence and Incident Management: Own operational excellence for the AI DevEx domain, including on-call rotations, incident response procedures, and post-incident learning. Balance strategic project delivery with ongoing maintenance, reliability improvements, and proactive support work. Establish metrics and monitoring to track team health and system performance.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration and Alignment: Partner with product, infrastructure, and engineering leadership to align on shared goals and technical strategy. Communicate complex technical concepts to diverse stakeholders, secure buy-in for initiatives, and bring clarity to ambiguous cross-functional projects. Act as a bridge between teams to accelerate organization-wide adoption of developer experience improvements.
Qualifications
What we look for.
Technical
AI-Assisted Development Tools and Workflows
Hands-on, demonstrated experience with modern AI coding assistants, large language models for software engineering, and AI-powered productivity tools. Deep familiarity with tools like GitHub Copilot, Claude, or similar platforms in production environments.
Developer Productivity Tooling
Proven expertise with developer experience infrastructure including code review systems, CI/CD platforms, testing frameworks, and monitoring solutions. Experience optimizing developer workflows and reducing friction in the SDLC.
Modern CI/CD and Testing Infrastructure
Strong background in contemporary CI/CD platforms, test automation frameworks, and platform modernization efforts. Knowledge of scaling testing infrastructure to support large engineering organizations and improving feedback loops.
Software Architecture and System Design
Ability to architect scalable systems that support thousands of engineers with complex workflows. Hands-on technical judgment to evaluate trade-offs between developer experience, system reliability, and operational efficiency.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related Field
Strong educational foundation in software engineering, computer science, or equivalent practical experience demonstrating core CS principles.
Advanced Technical Certifications (Preferred)
Optional: Advanced certifications in cloud platforms (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure), Kubernetes, or modern DevOps practices that enhance technical credibility.
Experience
15+ Years Software Engineering Experience
Extensive background as a software engineer with deep knowledge of production systems, engineering best practices, and technology evolution across multiple companies or domains.
5+ Years Engineering Team Leadership
Demonstrated experience leading technical engineering teams with responsibility for both people leadership and technical roadmap ownership. Track record of growing engineers, mentoring emerging leaders, and scaling teams as they grow.
Experience with Large-Scale Engineering Organizations
Background in environments with hundreds or thousands of engineers, understanding the complexities of scaling development processes, maintaining code quality, and improving velocity across large organizations.
Skills
Required
Engineering Team Leadership
Strategic and tactical team management experience with proven ability to set vision, develop talent, and execute on ambitious roadmaps. Strong track record of building high-performing, motivated teams.
Technical Decision Making
Ability to make sound architectural and technical decisions under uncertainty, balancing engineering velocity with system reliability and maintainability.
Communication and Stakeholder Management
Excellent written and verbal communication skills with demonstrated ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders, secure buy-in for initiatives, and translate between technical and business contexts.
AI and ML Fundamentals
Working knowledge of AI/ML concepts, including large language models, prompt engineering, and practical applications in developer productivity scenarios. Ability to evaluate emerging AI capabilities for engineering use cases.
Product and Customer Mindset
Pragmatic, customer-obsessed approach focused on measurable impact through reliability, performance, and ease of use. Bias toward shipping and learning over perfection.
Preferred
Experience with Developer Productivity Metrics
Nice to haveExperience defining, tracking, and optimizing DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, MTTR) and similar developer experience indicators.
Knowledge of Agentic Systems
Nice to haveFamiliarity with autonomous agent architectures, multi-step reasoning frameworks, and how to enable engineers to work effectively with agentic codebases and systems.
Cloud Platform Expertise
Nice to haveDeep experience with cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or Azure, particularly in building scalable, highly available systems.
Open Source Project Leadership
Nice to haveExperience leading or contributing to significant open-source projects, demonstrating ability to work in distributed, async-first environments.
Previous Startup or High-Growth Company Experience
Nice to haveBackground scaling engineering practices in fast-moving environments with rapidly changing requirements and resource constraints.
Tech stack
Languages
Frameworks
Databases
Tools
Other
Compensation
Pay and benefits.
Base·USD 236,000 – 339,200
Equity·Stock options
Benefits
Comprehensive Health and Wellness Coverage
Medical, dental, and vision insurance plans with employer contributions. Wellness programs, mental health support, and fitness benefits to support employee wellbeing.
Competitive Stock Options and Equity
Significant equity grants as part of total compensation to align leadership with company success and long-term value creation.
Flexible Time Off and Work Arrangements
Generous paid time off, parental leave, and flexible working arrangements supporting work-life balance for senior leaders managing teams.
Professional Development Budget
Annual learning and development budget for conferences, certifications, books, and training to stay current with rapidly evolving technology landscape.
401(k) Retirement Plan
Tax-advantaged retirement savings plan with employer match to support long-term financial planning.
Leadership Coaching and Career Development
Executive coaching, leadership training, and career development programs to enhance management capabilities and professional growth.
Company Culture and Innovation
Access to Snowflake's cutting-edge research, innovation lab participation, and opportunity to shape the future of AI-assisted software engineering.
Process
Interview steps.
- 01
Initial Recruiter Screen
30-minute conversation with Snowflake recruiter to discuss your background, interest in the role, and alignment with team needs. Expect questions about your leadership experience, AI tool familiarity, and what attracted you to Snowflake's mission of enabling the agentic enterprise.
- 02
Technical Hiring Manager Screen
45-minute technical conversation with the Engineering Systems leadership to dive deep into your hands-on experience with developer tooling, your vision for SDLC transformation, and how you approach scaling engineering practices. Come prepared with specific examples of developer experience improvements you've driven.
- 03
Engineering Leadership Panel Interview
90-minute panel interview with 2-3 senior engineers and leaders from Snowflake. Expect discussions on architecture decisions, team scaling, operational excellence, and how you think about balancing innovation with reliability. You may be given technical scenarios to work through.
- 04
VP/Senior Leadership Interview
45-minute conversation with VP of Engineering or similar senior leader to assess strategic alignment, organizational fit, and your vision for the future of developer experience in an AI-native world. Discuss how you see your role connecting to broader company goals and Snowflake's positioning.
- 05
Culture and Peer Interview
30-minute peer interview with current team members or cross-functional collaborators to assess working style, communication, and cultural fit. This is your opportunity to learn about day-to-day collaboration and team dynamics.
- 06
Final Offer Discussion
Negotiation and offer details round covering compensation, equity, start date, and any remaining questions about the role, team structure, or Snowflake's organization.
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.
We are hiring a rock star leader for our AI DevEx team. This team plays a crucial part in transforming how the Snowflake product is developed, evaluated and supported. The job is no less than building the ecosystem that powers our AI-pilled engineers and our agentic organizations and reinvents the SDLC for Snowflake.
As the manager for this growing team, you will lead the group of engineers working to reinvent how code is written, reviewed and runs in production to usher scale and velocity for the AI era. With context as the new source code, you will make it possible for every engineer at Snowflake to deliver through intent and direction.
In this role, you will:
Lead, coach, and grow the ES AI DevEx team while creating a high-energy, cohesive environment with strong planning, ownership, and career development.
Deliver the vision and roadmap for transforming the SDLC for all Snowflake engineers.
Drive measurable improvements in code review latency, ensure Snowflake developers can use the latest harnesses and models, and create the golden paths that agentic codebases are built upon.
Act as an agent of clarity in a space that is moving fast, making high quality decisions quickly by keeping up with the latest developments in the industry.
Own operational excellence for the area, including on-call health, incident response, postmortems, and balancing project delivery with ongoing maintenance and support work.
Our ideal candidate will have:
15+ years of software engineering experience
5+ years of experience leading a technical engineering team with a strong mix of people leadership, roadmap ownership, and hands-on technical judgment.
Demonstrated hands-on experience working with the latest AI tools, particularly in the productivity space.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to align stakeholders, secure buy-in, and bring clarity to ambiguous, cross-functional work.
A pragmatic, customer-obsessed mindset and a bias for measurable impact through reliability, performance, and ease of use.
Bonus points for experience with developer productivity tooling, AI-assisted engineering workflows, and modern CI/test platform modernization efforts.
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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