Principal AI-First Platform Engineer - Experiments & Flags

Snowflake; Menlo Park (CA); On-site; USD 264,000 - 380,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical insurance

Dental insurance

Vision insurance

Life insurance

Disability insurance

401(k) retirement plan

Flexible spending & health savings

12 paid holidays

Paid time off

Parental leave

Employee assistance program

Other company benefits

Job summary

Snowflake is seeking a Principal Software Engineer I to lead design and delivery of a next‑gen, AI‑driven configuration and experimentation platform. You will shape technical direction, drive safe, observable changes, and mentor engineers across teams.

You will build scalable, low-latency services, collaborate with data science teams, and advance AI‑first capabilities while delivering value quickly. This role emphasizes architecture, reliability, and impact across Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including technical leadership of complex backend or infrastructure initiatives spanning multiple teams.
• Deep experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems, with strong understanding of concurrency, consistency, caching, failure recovery, and performance.
• Strong CS fundamentals and hands-on proficiency in Java, Go, C++, or a comparable backend language, plus experience with AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• An AI-first engineering practice: actively use AI throughout the software lifecycle to improve execution, problem-solving, and quality.
• A track record of turning ambiguous problems into delivered systems, balancing architectural investments with incremental progress.
• Clear written communication, low-ego collaboration, ownership, and mentoring senior engineers.
• A CS degree or related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience with feature-flag/configuration platforms, progressive delivery, or AI-powered developer tools.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build distributed infrastructure with low-latency, scalable services.
• Ensure safe rollout with validation, guardrails, rollback, and observability.
• Advance experimentation with reliable assignment and measurement infrastructure.
• Embed AI-powered capabilities across the platform and improve adoption.
• Lead from architecture through adoption with self-service tools and migrations.
• Raise engineering bar with production code quality and mentoring.

Skills

12+ years exp

Distributed systems

Java/Go/C++

Cloud experience

AI-first engineering

Mentoring engineers

Education

CS degree or equivalent

Tools

AWS/Azure/Google Cloud

Job description

Snowflake is seeking a Principal Software Engineer I to lead design and delivery of a next‑gen, AI‑driven configuration and experimentation platform. You will shape technical direction, drive safe, observable changes, and mentor engineers across teams.

You will build scalable, low-latency services, collaborate with data science teams, and advance AI‑first capabilities while delivering value quickly. This role emphasizes architecture, reliability, and impact across Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud.