Staff Software Engineer - Database Engineering

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 is a high-growth, cloud-native data platform company committed to empowering enterprises to achieve their full potential. With a culture built on impact, innovation, and collaboration, we offer an environment where you can build large-scale systems, move fast, and take your technology career to the next level. We are seeking a highly talented and experienced Software Engineer to join our Database Engineering https://snowflake.phenompro.com/us/en/database-engineering team. In this role, you will be a key contributor to the evolution of our core product: an elastic, large-scale, high-performance data processing system. We are looking for smart, enthusiastic engineers who can quickly master complex technical areas and are passionate about building new, industry-leading technologies. AS A SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER AT SNOWFLAKE, YOU WILL: - Design and implement novel query optimization or distributed data processing algorithms to maintain Snowflake's industry-leading data warehousing capabilities. - Design, develop, and support a petabyte-scale cloud database system, ensuring it is highly parallel and fault-tolerant. - Develop and implement the new service architecture required to enable the next generation of the Snowflake Data Cloud. - Analyze, understand, and resolve complex performance and scalability bottlenecks within the system. - Own the end-to-end delivery of your projects, including identifying solutions, design, implementation, rigorous testing, and safe production rollout. - Ensure operational readiness and execute production operations of services, meeting our customer commitments for durability, availability, and performance. - Build high-quality, highly reliable software that meets the demands of the world's largest companies. - Develop tools to provide customers with greater insight into their workloads. - Evangelize best practices for database usage and end-to-end system architecture. - Mentor and support the professional growth of junior engineers on the team. OUR IDEAL SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER WILL HAVE: - 6+ years of industry experience working on commercial or open-source software. - Strong fluency in C/C++ and/or Java - Excellent problem-solving skills and a deep understanding of Computer Science fundamentals, including data structures, algorithms, and distributed systems. - Strong systems programming skills, including experience with multi-threading and concurrency. - A solid foundation in distributed systems concepts (e.g., consistency, scaling, failure recovery). - Experience with implementation testing, debugging, and documentation , specifically within a Linux development environment. - Bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field. BONUS POINTS FOR EXPERIENCE WITH THE FOLLOWING: - Working experience in database internal design and implementation, systems programming and large scale distributed systems design and implementation - Experience with working on design, implementation and production-izing distri