Principal Backend Developer

TL;DR

Principal Backend Developer: Designing and operating large-scale distributed data systems focused on streaming and transformation primitives at cloud scale with an accent on performance, scalability, and reliability. Focus on leading multi-quarter technical initiatives, architectural design, and collaboration across product and engineering teams to build robust data engineering pipelines.

Location: On-site in Bellevue, Washington, United States

Salary: $264,000 – $379,500

Company

Snowflake is a leading cloud data platform powering the era of the agentic enterprise with a focus on AI-native innovation and scalable data infrastructure.

What you will do

• Define and drive technical direction for core data engineering and streaming transformation primitives.
• Lead multi-quarter technical investments focused on performance, scalability, correctness, and reliability.
• Collaborate with product, research, and engineering teams to co-design data engineering primitives.
• Conduct architectural reviews and provide high-quality feedback to engineers.
• Engage with customers and field teams to prioritize based on real-world usage patterns.
• Contribute to Snowflake's technical reputation through talks and research publications.

Requirements

• Must have 15+ years of experience designing and operating large-scale distributed data systems.
• Proficiency in C++ or Java and strong computer science fundamentals including distributed systems and fault tolerance.
• Experience leading cross-team technical initiatives at petabyte scale.
• Strong communication skills to represent complex technical trade-offs.
• Location requirement: must work onsite in Bellevue, Washington, USA.

Nice to have

• Experience with major analytical DBMS like Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift.
• Hands-on background in streaming/event-driven systems such as Flink, Kafka, Spark Structured Streaming.
• Familiarity with data engineering ecosystem tools like dbt, Airflow, Fivetran.
• Experience with CDC, change propagation, or incremental computation patterns.
• Advanced degree (MS or PhD) in Computer Science focused on databases or distributed systems.

Culture & Benefits

• Work in a fast-growing product company focused on innovation and AI-native thinking.
• High-ownership team environment with impact on widely used data engineering features.
• Collaborative culture emphasizing experimentation and rapid iteration.