Staff Software Engineer – Engineering Systems, Continuous Integration Team

Staff Engineer · Staff · Full Time

US-WA-BellevueUSD 236k – 339kToday
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Role

What you'll do.

Join Snowflake's Engineering Systems team as a Staff Software Engineer to architect and lead the Continuous Integration platform powering the Data Cloud. This role combines deep distributed systems expertise with technical leadership, requiring 8+ years of experience building enterprise-grade CI infrastructure at scale while mentoring engineers and driving platform strategy across thousands of developers and millions of builds.

Responsibilities

  • Architect and Own CI Platform Direction: Design and maintain the technical architecture of Snowflake's CI platform, ensuring it scales reliably to support thousands of developers, millions of builds monthly, and a rapidly expanding multi-repository codebase across multiple cloud providers
  • Lead Distributed Systems Implementation: Design, implement, and evolve distributed CI services that deliver elastic scalability, high performance, and fault tolerance across heterogeneous cloud infrastructure while maintaining service reliability
  • Drive Strategic Platform Evolution: Partner with product managers and engineering leadership to develop quarterly and long-term roadmaps that balance immediate customer needs with forward-looking technical innovation and emerging CI/CD technologies
  • Establish Engineering Excellence Standards: Set and enforce engineering quality standards through rigorous code reviews, design reviews, and architectural guidance, ensuring CI infrastructure meets enterprise-grade reliability, security, and maintainability expectations
  • Resolve Complex Technical Challenges: Identify, analyze, and resolve systemic technical challenges including build performance optimization, resource efficiency, multi-tenant isolation, security hardening, and platform reliability at scale
  • Mentor and Develop Engineering Talent: Elevate technical judgment, design quality, and engineering craftsmanship across the team through hands-on mentorship, code review feedback, and architectural guidance that grows career development
  • Evaluate and Adopt Emerging Technologies: Research, evaluate, and strategically adopt emerging CI/CD technologies, tooling patterns, and industry best practices to maintain Snowflake's competitive edge in developer platform innovation
  • Drive Cross-Team Developer Platform Initiatives: Serve as key stakeholder and collaborator on cross-functional initiatives affecting developer productivity, coordinating with adjacent Engineering Systems teams and leadership to shape holistic developer experience

Qualifications

What we look for.

Technical

  • Distributed Systems Design at Scale

    Proven ability to design, build, and operate distributed systems serving massive scale across thousands of nodes and millions of transactions, with deep understanding of consistency models, failure modes, and fault tolerance patterns

  • Enterprise-Grade CI/CD Infrastructure

    Substantial hands-on experience designing, building, scaling, or significantly evolving continuous integration infrastructure supporting large engineering organizations, comparable to thousands of developers and millions of builds

  • Multi-Language Proficiency

    Production-level fluency in Java, C++, Python, or Go with demonstrated ability to write efficient, maintainable code and select appropriate languages for specific systems challenges

  • Computer Science Fundamentals

    Strong mastery of data structures, algorithms, distributed systems theory, concurrent programming, systems design principles, and capacity planning for infrastructure systems

  • Build System Knowledge

    Deep technical understanding of modern build systems, compilation processes, dependency management, caching strategies, parallelization, and resource optimization techniques

Education

  • Bachelor's Degree or Equivalent Professional Experience

    Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related field; or equivalent 8+ years of professional experience demonstrating mastery of computer science fundamentals and distributed systems

Experience

  • 8+ Years of Distributed Systems Development

    Minimum 8 years of professional experience designing and building production distributed systems, with track record of shipping systems serving massive scale and diverse use cases

  • Technical Leadership at Organizational Level

    Demonstrated track record of owning system architecture decisions, driving major technical decisions, setting engineering standards, and raising technical bar across teams or organizations

  • Developer Productivity and Platform Thinking

    Proven passion and experience treating developer experience as a product, with focus on making engineers faster, happier, and more productive through thoughtful infrastructure design

  • Strategic Decision-Making and Execution

    Strong strategic mindset with ability to identify high-impact priorities, translate strategy into executable technical plans, and navigate tradeoffs between competing demands

  • Mentorship and Technical Influence

    Track record of elevating engineers around you through code reviews, design guidance, technical mentorship, and establishing practices that improve team's technical judgment

Skills

Required

  • Architectural Design of Distributed Systems

    Ability to design fault-tolerant, scalable architectures supporting millions of operations with careful attention to consistency, availability, and partition tolerance tradeoffs

  • Build System Optimization and Performance Tuning

    Deep expertise in identifying and eliminating build performance bottlenecks through caching strategies, intelligent parallelization, incremental build optimization, and resource scheduling

  • Cloud Infrastructure Management

    Hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure provisioning, orchestration, and multi-cloud deployment strategies across AWS, GCP, Azure or similar platforms

  • API Design and Distributed Communication

    Strong experience designing robust APIs, implementing reliable RPC mechanisms, handling network failures, and building resilient service-to-service communication patterns

  • Observability and Debugging at Scale

    Proficiency with monitoring systems, metrics collection, distributed tracing, logging infrastructure, and debugging complex production systems serving massive scale

  • Code Review and Technical Mentorship

    Ability to conduct thorough, constructive code reviews that elevate code quality and provide educational feedback that develops junior engineers' technical judgment

  • Technical Writing and Documentation

    Strong ability to articulate complex technical tradeoffs clearly through design documents, architectural diagrams, RCAs, and technical proposals for both engineering and leadership audiences

Preferred

  • Data Systems and Analytics Platforms

    Nice to have

    Experience designing or operating distributed data systems, analytical query engines, or data warehousing infrastructure handling massive datasets and concurrent queries

  • Jenkins Administration and Evolution

    Nice to have

    Hands-on experience operating, scaling, or significantly improving Jenkins infrastructure at enterprise scale with custom plugins and optimization

  • Bazel Build System Expertise

    Nice to have

    Production experience with Bazel for managing complex monorepo builds, custom rules, caching strategies, and addressing scale challenges in large organizations

  • Multi-Tenant System Architecture

    Nice to have

    Experience designing multi-tenant systems with rigorous focus on isolation, resource fairness, performance guarantees, and security boundaries between tenants

  • Developer Tooling and Platform Engineering

    Nice to have

    Background building and evolving developer tools, internal platforms, or infrastructure that directly impacts engineering velocity and developer experience across organizations

  • Technical Documentation and Planning

    Nice to have

    Experience authoring roadmap documents, technical design specifications, project plans, post-mortems, root cause analyses, and architectural proposals

  • Kubernetes and Container Orchestration

    Nice to have

    Experience managing containerized CI/CD workloads at scale using Kubernetes or similar orchestration platforms with custom scheduling and resource management

  • GitOps and Infrastructure as Code

    Nice to have

    Experience with declarative infrastructure management, GitOps workflows, infrastructure-as-code tooling, and continuous deployment patterns

Tech stack

Languages

JavaPythonGoC++

Frameworks

JenkinsBazelGitHub ActionsArgoCD

Databases

Distributed Data Systems

Tools

Multi-Cloud InfrastructureBuild System OptimizationMonitoring and Observability

Other

Distributed Systems ArchitectureMulti-Tenant System Design

Compensation

Pay and benefits.

Base·USD 236,000 – 339,200

Equity·Stock options

Benefits

  • Comprehensive Health Coverage

    Medical, dental, and vision insurance with competitive coverage options for employees and dependents

  • Retirement Planning

    401(k) retirement savings plan with company matching and Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) for building long-term wealth

  • Generous Time Off

    Flexible paid time off policy allowing employees to take time for vacation, wellness, and personal needs

  • Significant Equity Compensation

    Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) in range of $600,000 - $1,800,000 providing substantial long-term incentive and ownership stake in Snowflake

  • Performance Bonus

    Annual performance-based bonus representing 15% of base salary, rewarding achievement of individual and team objectives

  • Professional Development

    Investment in continuous learning, technical certifications, and conference attendance to grow expertise and stay current with emerging technologies

  • Collaborative Work Environment

    Access to industry-leading engineering talent from Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and other top technology companies enabling knowledge sharing and professional growth

Process

Interview steps.

  1. 01

    Recruiter Screen

    Initial conversation with Snowflake recruiter to assess background, experience with distributed systems and CI/CD infrastructure, career goals, and alignment with staff-level expectations

  2. 02

    Hiring Manager Discussion

    Deep dive with Engineering Systems leadership on technical vision, architectural thinking, experience scaling platforms, and approach to mentorship and technical leadership

  3. 03

    Technical Architecture Interview

    Comprehensive discussion of system design capabilities, focusing on distributed systems architecture, trade-off analysis, scalability considerations, and handling millions of builds at massive scale

  4. 04

    CI/CD Infrastructure Deep Dive

    Technical conversation with senior engineers on CI platform specifics, build system optimization, multi-tenant isolation strategies, performance tuning, and experience with Jenkins, Bazel, or similar platforms

  5. 05

    Technical Leadership and Mentorship Round

    Discussion of staff-level competencies including code review philosophy, approach to raising engineering standards, mentorship philosophy, and examples of elevating teams technically

  6. 06

    Cross-Functional Collaboration

    Conversation with adjacent Engineering Systems teams or product partners to assess collaboration style, ability to influence without authority, and approach to cross-team initiatives

  7. 07

    Executive Alignment

    Final discussion with Engineering Systems leadership on strategic vision, long-term platform direction, and role in shaping Snowflake's developer infrastructure strategy

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're hiring a Staff Software Engineer to help us build a world-class developer platform that fuels the Snowflake Data Cloud. As an engineer on the Continuous Integration team within Engineering Systems (ES), you will set the technical direction for and deliver the CI service that powers Snowflake's repositories and developer ecosystem.

Together with industry-wide experts in distributed systems, cross-cloud development, and engineering excellence, you will evolve our developer infrastructure and tooling to be elastic, large-scale, and highly performant — with simplicity at its core.

As a Staff Engineer on the CI team, you will help Snowflake realize its mission of becoming the premier Data Cloud by accelerating the delivery of high-quality software to production. You will set the technical standard for the team, drive architectural decisions, mentor engineers across the organization, and partner with product and engineering leadership to chart the quarterly and long-term roadmaps. You will ensure the team executes toward serving the current needs of its customers while staying ahead of technological trends and future demands.

---

AS A STAFF SOFTWARE ENGINEER — CI, YOU WILL:

- Own the technical direction and architecture of Snowflake's CI platform — designing systems that scale reliably across thousands of developers, millions of builds, and a rapidly growing multi-repository codebase

- Lead the design and implementation of distributed CI services that are elastic, performant, and fault-tolerant across cloud providers

- Drive the CI platform strategy — partner with product managers and engineering leadership to define quarterly and long-term roadmaps that balance customer needs with technical innovation

- Set the engineering bar for the team through code reviews, design reviews, and architectural guidance — ensuring the CI platform is built with the quality and rigor expected of enterprise-grade infrastructure

- Identify and resolve systemic technical challenges — from build performance and resource efficiency to multi-tenant isolation, reliability, and security

- Mentor and develop engineers on the team — elevate technical judgment, design quality, and engineering craftsmanship across the group

- Stay ahead of the curve — evaluate and adopt emerging CI/CD technologies, tooling patterns, and industry best practices to keep Snowflake's developer platform at the leading edge

- Be a key stakeholder in cross-team initiatives that affect developer productivity — collaborating with adjacent ES teams and engineering leadership to shape the broader developer experience

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OUR IDEAL STAFF SOFTWARE ENGINEER WILL HAVE:

Required:

- 8+ years of industry experience designing and building distributed systems at scale

- A track record of technical leadership — owning system architecture, driving design decisions, and raising the technical bar for a team or organization

- Deep experience with enterprise-grade Continuous Integration for cloud-based distributed systems — you've built, scaled, or significantly evolved CI infrastructure at a comparable scale

- Strong passion for making developers highly productive — you think about developer experience as a product and are energized by making engineers faster and happier

- Excellent CS fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, distributed systems, and systems design

- Fluency in Java, C++, Python, or Go — with the versatility to work across languages and systems

- A strategic mindset — strong sense of what to prioritize for maximum impact and the ability to translate strategy into executable technical plans

- Ability to mentor and influence — you elevate engineers around you through code reviews, design guidance, and technical mentorship

- Excellent communication skills — both written and verbal — with the ability to articulate technical tradeoffs clearly to engineering and leadership audiences

Preferred:

- Experience developing data systems or distributed systems internals

- Hands-on experience with Jenkins, Bazel, ArgoCD, GitHub Actions, or other CI/CD suites at scale

- Experience designing multi-tenant systems with focus on reliability, performance, isolation, and security

- Proven experience authoring roadmap documents, technical design docs, project plans, and RCAs

- Experience with build system optimization — caching strategies, parallelization, incremental builds, and resource scheduling

- Background in developer tooling or platform engineering organizations

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SNOWFLAKE VALUES WE'RE LOOKING FOR:

- Get It Done — You ship high-quality systems at pace. You don't just design — you build, debug, and deliver.

- Own It — You treat the CI platform as your own. You anticipate where it will break at 10x scale and fix it before it does.

- Make Each Other the Best — You raise the bar for everyone around you. Code reviews, design feedback, and mentorship aren't side activities — they're core to how you work.

- Think Big — You see CI infrastructure as a strategic lever for Snowflake's engineering velocity, not just a build system. You design for the future.

COMPENSATION

Snowflake is committed to pay equity and transparency. Actual compensation will be determined based on factors including relevant experience, skills, location, and internal equity.

Base Salary Range - Total Target Compensation

$236,000 – $354,000 - $271,400 – $407,100

In addition to base salary and bonus (15% target), this role is eligible for equity in the form of RSUs ($600,000 – $1,800,000 range) and a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401(k), ESPP, generous PTO, and more.

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WHY ENGINEERING SYSTEMS AT SNOWFLAKE?

- Build infrastructure that thousands of engineers depend on every day — your work directly multiplies the productivity of Snowflake's entire engineering organization

- Operate at serious scale — millions of builds, thousands of developers, a multi-cloud codebase growing rapidly

- Technical depth and autonomy — you'll own architecture decisions on critical infrastructure with real impact

- Work with exceptional engineers — the ES team includes industry experts in distributed systems, build infrastructure, and developer tooling from Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and beyond

- Competitive compensation and meaningful equity in one of the most important enterprise technology companies in the world

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 an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.

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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