Principal AI Frontline Engineer – Enterprise Deployments

Snowflake; Menlo Park (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Snowflake’s Frontier Engineering seeks a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer who embeds with enterprises to design, build, and deploy production-grade AI systems. You’ll be the senior technical partner to CTOs and chief architects, setting technical direction for high-stakes AI engagements.

You will write production code, review designs, own AI quality metrics, mentor engineers, and spend at least 25% of your time onsite with customers across the US, helping shape roadmaps and scalable platforms.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software engineering experience.
• Proven track record advising CTOs and senior engineering leaders.
• Experience turning delivery patterns into reusable platforms.
• Deep expertise in production AI architectures including RAG pipelines.
• Hands-on developer who writes and reviews production code.
• Strong systems mindset with clear technical communication.

Responsibilities

• Be the trusted technical partner to customer engineering leadership.
• Drive architecture and technical strategy across high-stakes deployments.
• Stay hands-on with production code and prototypes.
• Own the AI quality bar with measurable evaluation standards.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship across teams.
• Travel to customer sites as needed (approx. 25%).

Skills

Software architecture

AI/ML production systems

Executive guidance

Hands-on coding

Technical communication

RAG pipelines

Job description

Snowflake’s Frontier Engineering seeks a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer who embeds with enterprises to design, build, and deploy production-grade AI systems. You’ll be the senior technical partner to CTOs and chief architects, setting technical direction for high-stakes AI engagements.

You will write production code, review designs, own AI quality metrics, mentor engineers, and spend at least 25% of your time onsite with customers across the US, helping shape roadmaps and scalable platforms.