Principal AI Software Engineer - Snowflake Intelligence (Menlo Park)

Overview

Snowflake is about empowering enterprises to achieve their full potential — and people too. With a culture that’s all in on impact, innovation, and collaboration, Snowflake is the sweet spot for building big, moving fast, and taking technology — and careers — to the next level.

About The Role

The Cortex Apps team is defining the future of AI for enterprise data. Our mission is to transform how the world’s largest enterprises interact with their data through flagship products like Snowflake Intelligence .

As a Principal AI Engineer , you will be a technical North Star for our AI initiatives. You won’t just execute on a roadmap; you will help define it. You will tackle the most complex, frontier problems in agentic reasoning, NL-to-SQL, and enterprise-scale RAG, ensuring our AI products are not only innovative but fundamentally reliable and scalable for the Fortune 500.

What you will do in this role

• Technical Strategy & Architecture: Define the long-term technical vision for Snowflake Intelligence. Lead the architectural design of multi-agent systems, complex tool-use frameworks, and self-correcting NL-to-SQL engines.
• Drive Industry-Leading Reliability: Move beyond simple evals to build world-class, automated hill-climbing infrastructure. Establish the methodology for how Snowflake measures and guarantees LLM performance across diverse customer schemas.
• Cross-Functional Influence: Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to align AI capabilities with business goals. Bridge the gap between Research (modeling) and Production (infra), ensuring the latest LLM breakthroughs are viable at Snowflake scale.
• Ecosystem Thinking: Design extensible context engineering patterns—including advanced function calling and semantic layer integration—that can be leveraged by other Snowflake teams and external developers.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Act as a force multiplier. Mentor Staff and Senior engineers, lead cross-functional strike teams on high-stakes projects, and foster a culture of technical excellence and rapid experimentation.

Requirements

• Experience: 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years specifically leading the deployment of LLM-based applications at massive scale.
• Education: Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Computer Science, AI, or a related field.
• Expertise: Deep, under-the-hood understanding of LLM orchestration. You should be an expert in prompt optimization, semantic modeling, and building robust guardrails for non-deterministic systems.
• Systems Thinking: Proven track record of designing complex systems that integrate AI with traditional data stacks (SQL, Retrieval Systems, Semantic Layers).
• Communication: Exceptional ability to communicate complex technical trade-offs to both executive leadership and ICs. You are as comfortable in a design doc as you are in a boardroom.
• Proven Impact: You have previously held a Principal or equivalent high-level IC role, or have led the technical launch of a major AI product used by millions.

About Snowflake

Snowflake is the AI Data Cloud. We aren't just shipping wrappers; we are building the foundational intelligence layer for the world’s data. Join us as we scale Cortex, including Snowflake Intelligence, Cortex Agents, Analyst, and Search—to define the next decade of enterprise computing.

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.

Compensation & Benefits

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

The following represents the expected range of compensation for this role:

• The estimated base salary range for this role is $264,000 - $379,500.
• Additionally, this role is eligible to participate in Snowflake’s bonus and equity plan.

The successful candidate’s starting salary will be determined based on permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as skills, experience, and geographic location. This role is also eligible for a competitive benefits package that includes: medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance; 401(k) retirement plan; flexible spending & health savings account; at least 12 paid holidays; paid time off; parental leave; employee assistance program; and other company benefits.

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