Senior Software Engineer - Identity, Data Security and Trust
Senior Software Engineer · Senior · Full Time
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Role
What you'll do.
Senior Software Engineer role at Snowflake focused on building the security backbone of their Data Cloud platform. You'll design and implement critical AI-native security capabilities, foundational identity and access management systems, and security infrastructure spanning secret management and encryption. This position requires 5+ years of distributed systems experience with proficiency in Java, C++, Python, Golang, or Rust, alongside strong foundational computer science skills and a track record of shipping production services at scale.
Responsibilities
- Design and Implement AI Security Capabilities: Architect and develop critical AI security capabilities including controlled, audited agent workflows, Model Context Protocol (MCP) server and client security, agent identity frameworks, and administrative guardrails that form the foundation for secure agentic enterprise adoption across Snowflake's platform.
- Build Identity and Access Management Systems: Develop and evolve foundational identity and access management (IAM) systems at scale, including authentication protocols, Single Sign-On (SSO) integrations, multi-factor authentication (MFA), OAuth/OIDC, SAML, SCIM, and fine-grained Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) supporting millions of objects and users.
- Design Core Security Infrastructure: Architect and develop security infrastructure spanning secret management, key management, service identity, and end-to-end encryption across a natively multi-cloud environment, ensuring data protection at every layer.
- Develop Security Monitoring and Enforcement Tools: Build and maintain comprehensive security tooling to define, monitor, enforce, and detect policy violations across the platform. Implement automation and self-service processes that increase developer autonomy while promoting secure-by-default engineering practices.
- Create Extensible Security Components: Design and implement extensible, plug-and-play platform components that enable first-party, second-party, and third-party security detectors, responders, and visualizations to be integrated with Snowflake's Trust Center.
- Develop Security Posture Assessments: Leverage industry-accredited benchmarks such as CIS to develop standards-based security posture assessments. Contribute to behavioral analytics pipelines and PII attribution capabilities that help detect, prevent, and respond to threats and abuse vectors.
- Collaborate Across Engineering Teams: Partner with engineering teams throughout the company to understand security pain points, requirements, and constraints. Deliver innovative security solutions that reduce friction and implementation complexity without compromising platform safety or compliance.
- Lead Secure Network Architecture Design: Design and enforce secure network architectures to actively defend against ransomware attacks and detect sophisticated data exfiltration attempts, ensuring resilience against evolving security threats.
- Maintain High Code Quality Standards: Participate in design reviews, code reviews, and on-call rotations. Hold a high bar for code quality, reliability, performance, and sound technical decision-making across the security infrastructure.
Qualifications
What we look for.
Technical
Distributed Systems Design
5+ years of industry experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems in production cloud environments with deep understanding of system scalability, fault tolerance, and eventual consistency patterns.
Programming Language Proficiency
Proficiency in one or more of Java, C++, Python, Golang, or Rust with demonstrated ability to write production-grade, maintainable code. Strong SQL skills for implementing data-driven features and security queries.
Cloud Platform Experience
Hands-on experience shipping and on-calling production services with a focus on availability, reliability, observability, and performance monitoring in cloud environments.
Foundational Computer Science
Strong computer science fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, systems design principles, and distributed computing concepts such as consensus, replication, and partitioning.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related Field
BS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline such as mathematics, physics, or software engineering.
Equivalent Practical Experience
Equivalent practical engineering experience demonstrating mastery of core computer science concepts and production system design, with documented track record of shipping complex systems.
Experience
5+ Years Production Systems Experience
Minimum 5+ years of industry experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems in production cloud environments with demonstrated impact on system reliability and security.
Production Service Operations
Proven experience shipping and on-calling production services with measurable focus on maintaining high availability, reliability standards, and observable system health through comprehensive monitoring.
Collaborative Engineering Approach
Demonstrated collaborative, low-ego approach to software engineering. Comfortable iterating rapidly, incorporating feedback, and working effectively across product management, design, and peer engineering teams.
Skills
Required
Java
Production-level proficiency in Java for building scalable, reliable backend services and distributed systems. Experience with modern Java frameworks and performance optimization.
C++
Strong C++ capabilities for systems-level programming, performance-critical components, or database/platform internals work. Understanding of memory management and concurrency primitives.
Python
Competency in Python for backend services, scripting, data analysis, or ML-adjacent security features. Experience with async frameworks and production deployment.
Golang
Proficiency in Golang for microservices, cloud-native applications, or systems programming. Understanding of goroutines, channels, and concurrent patterns.
Rust
Advanced Rust capabilities for systems programming, memory safety, and high-performance components. Experience with async Rust and performance optimization.
SQL
Solid SQL proficiency for writing complex queries, understanding query performance, and designing data models. Ability to optimize queries for large-scale analytical workloads.
Distributed Systems Design
Deep expertise in designing and building distributed systems including consensus protocols, replication strategies, eventual consistency, and fault tolerance mechanisms.
Systems Design and Architecture
Demonstrated ability to design scalable systems architecture, make sound technical trade-offs, and communicate technical decisions clearly across teams.
Preferred
Identity and Access Management (IAM) Protocols
Nice to haveKnowledge of IAM concepts and protocols including SAML, SCIM, OAuth, OIDC, Federation, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). Understanding of modern authentication flows and delegation patterns.
Security Infrastructure
Nice to haveFamiliarity with security infrastructure domains such as secret management, key management, service identity, authentication, authorization, encryption, and cryptographic systems.
Database Internals and Data Platforms
Nice to haveExperience with database internals, query optimization engines, data platform systems, or data warehouse architecture. Understanding of columnar storage, indexing strategies, or distributed query processing.
Machine Learning and Anomaly Detection
Nice to haveExposure to machine learning or AI systems, particularly applied to anomaly detection, behavioral analytics, risk classification, or security use cases. Experience with ML pipelines and feature engineering.
Developer Platforms and Extensibility
Nice to haveContributions to developer platforms, Software Development Kits (SDKs), plugin architectures, or multi-tenant extensibility frameworks that enable third-party integrations.
Kubernetes and Cloud Operations
Nice to haveExperience deploying, configuring, and operating services on Kubernetes or production cloud platforms including AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Understanding of container orchestration and cloud-native patterns.
AI and Agentic Systems Security
Nice to haveFamiliarity with emerging AI and agentic systems, including Model Context Protocol (MCP), agent orchestration, AI safety, or governance frameworks for autonomous AI systems.
Observability and Monitoring
Nice to haveStrong experience with observability practices, distributed tracing, metrics collection, log aggregation, and building comprehensive monitoring systems for production services.
Tech stack
Languages
Frameworks
Databases
Tools
Other
Compensation
Pay and benefits.
Base·USD 200,000 – 287,500
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 Senior Software Engineer across our Identity, Data Security and Trust organization. These teams builds the security backbone of Snowflake — enabling customers to confidently bring their most sensitive data and workloads to the Data Cloud, empowering every Snowflake engineer to deliver the most secure platform at scale, and giving customers the tools to monitor, achieve, and maintain a strong security, governance, privacy, and compliance posture. As the agentic era accelerates, these teams are at the forefront of building AI-native security capabilities that protect the world's data.
AS A SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER AT SNOWFLAKE, YOU WILL:
Design and implement critical AI security capabilities — including controlled, audited agent workflows, MCP server and client security, agent identity frameworks, and admin guardrails — that form the foundation for secure agentic enterprise adoption
Build and evolve foundational identity and access management systems, including authentication protocols, SSO integrations, multi-factor authentication, OAuth/OIDC, SAML, SCIM, and fine-grained RBAC that scales to millions of objects and users
Design and develop core security infrastructure spanning secret management, key management, service identity, and end-to-end encryption across a natively multi-cloud environment
Build and maintain security tooling to define, monitor, enforce, and detect policy violations across the platform; implement automation and self-service processes that increase developer autonomy and promote secure-by-default engineering
Design and implement extensible, plug-and-play platform components that enable first-, second-, and third-party security detectors, responders, and visualizations to be built on top of Snowflake's Trust Center
Leverage industry-accredited benchmarks (e.g., CIS) to develop standards-based security posture assessments; contribute to behavioral analytics pipelines and PII attribution capabilities that help detect, prevent, and respond to threats and abuse vectors
Partner with engineering teams across the company to understand security pain points and deliver solutions that reduce friction without compromising safety
Lead the design and enforcement of secure network architectures to actively defend against ransomware attacks and detect sophisticated data exfiltration attempts.
Participate in design reviews, code reviews, and on-call rotations; hold a high bar for code quality, reliability, and sound technical decisions
OUR IDEAL SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER WILL HAVE:
5+ years of industry experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems in production cloud environments
Strong foundational computer science skills — data structures, algorithms, systems design, and distributed computing
Proficiency in one or more of Java, C++, Python, Golang, or Rust, with solid SQL skills for data-driven features
Experience shipping and on-calling production services with a focus on availability, reliability, and observability
A collaborative, low-ego approach to engineering — comfortable iterating quickly and working across PM, design, and peer engineering teams
BS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience
BONUS POINTS FOR THE FOLLOWING:
Knowledge of identity and access management concepts and protocols — SAML, SCIM, OAuth, OIDC, Federation, MFA, or RBAC
Familiarity with security infrastructure domains such as secret management, key management, service identity, authentication, or authorization
Experience with database internals, query engines, or data platform systems
Exposure to machine learning or AI systems, particularly applied to anomaly detection, behavioral analytics, or risk classification
Contributions to developer platforms, SDKs, or multi-tenant extensibility frameworks
Experience deploying and operating services on Kubernetes or production cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
WHY JOIN OUR IDENTITY, DATA SECURITY AND TRUST TEAM AT SNOWFLAKE?
These teams sit at a rare intersection: the security, identity, infrastructure, and customer trust layers of one of the fastest-growing data platforms in the world. You won't be maintaining someone else's security layer; you'll be defining it. These are teams that value craft, curiosity, and collaboration, and that take pride in making complex security invisible to the developers and customers who depend on it. If you want a role where your technical decisions matter and your growth is tied directly to the scale of the platform you're protecting — and you're energized by the challenge of securing the agentic era before it fully arrives — this is it.
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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