Senior Software Engineer (Distributed Systems)

Location: Menlo Park, California, United States

Salary: $200,000–$287,500 per year

Company

Snowflake provides a cloud data platform and is developing systems for the era of the agentic enterprise.

What you will do

• Design, build, test, deploy, and operate backend software and distributed systems powering Snowflake Warehouses.
• Own medium-sized engineering projects from technical design through delivery and contribute to larger cross-team initiatives.
• Build and evolve warehouse features, billing, metering, and usability capabilities.
• Improve reliability, scalability, performance, and operational health in production.
• Participate in the full software lifecycle, including rollout, on-call support, incident triage, and production improvements.
• Collaborate with engineers, product managers, and adjacent teams through design reviews, code reviews, and technical communication.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 4–7 years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong programming, debugging, and software design skills in one or more modern programming languages.
• Experience building and operating backend or distributed systems in production.
• Ability to independently execute medium-sized projects and contribute as a technical partner on larger cross-team projects.
• Understanding of the software development lifecycle and engineering practices across design, implementation, testing, deployment, and operations.
• Experience with on-call, production support, or incident response for live systems.
• Strong communication skills, a collaborative low-ego working style, customer orientation, and sound judgment regarding reliability, usability, and business impact.

Nice to have

• Master’s or PhD in Computer Science or a related technical field.
• Experience with distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, data platforms, or large-scale backend services.
• Experience with billing, metering, control plane systems, or customer-facing platform capabilities.
• Familiarity with performance-sensitive or highly reliable production environments.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and break down complex technical problems into practical solutions.

Culture & Benefits

• Fast-growing engineering environment focused on innovation and challenging conventional thinking.
• AI-assisted workflows are encouraged when they improve engineering leverage, speed, or quality without compromising judgment.
• Work centers on high-impact warehouse systems that are critical to customers and Snowflake’s business.