Principal Data Platform Architect

Snowflake; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Snowflake is seeking an experienced Data Engineering - Applied Field Engineer to join our team in CA/Menlo Park with remote options. You will partner with sales to design, demo, and implement data architecture solutions using Snowflake across multi-cloud environments.

You will engage executives and technical stakeholders, lead architecture discussions, and help close opportunities through compelling value-based demonstrations and proofs of concept.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in enterprise data architecture.
• 5+ years in pre-sales roles.
• Strong presentation skills for execs and tech.
• Ability to map customer problems to Snowflake solutions.
• Experience with data lakehouse architectures.
• Development experience with SQL, Python, Spark, and related tools.

Responsibilities

• Present Snowflake architecture to executives and technical teams.
• Lead pre-sales activities including demos and POCs.
• Stay current on data tech landscape and competitive positioning.
• Collaborate with Product, Engineering and Marketing to improve Snowflake offerings.

Skills

Data architecture

Pre-sales

Executive presentation

Customer discovery

Data integration

ETL/ELT

Big data tech

Cloud data platforms

SQL

Python

Education

Bachelor’s Degree

Master’s Degree in CS/Engineering/Math

Tools

Apache NiFi

Matillion

Fivetran

Qlik

Informatica

Kafka

Flink

Spark

Iceberg

Delta Lake

Parquet

Job description

At Snowflake, we are powering the era of the agentic enterprise. To usher in this new era, we seek AI-native thinkers across every function who are energized by the opportunity to reinvent how they work. You don’t just use tools; you possess an innate curiosity, treating AI as a high-trust collaborator that is core to how you solve problems and accelerate your impact. We look for low-ego individuals who thrive in dynamic and fast-moving environments and move with an experimental mindset — who rapidly test emerging capabilities to discover simpler, more powerful ways to deliver results. At Snowflake, your role isn’t just to execute a function, but to help redefine the future of how work gets done.

Data Engineering - Applied Field Engineer- CA- Menlo Park- Remote

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.

Our Solution Engineering organization is seeking a Data Engineering Specialist to join our Applied Field Engineering team who can provide technical leadership in working with both technical and business executives in the design and architecture of the Snowflake Cloud Data Platform as a critical component of their enterprise data architecture and overall ecosystem. In this role you will work directly with the sales team to understand the needs of our customers, strategize on how to navigate winning sales cycles, provide compelling value-based demonstrations, support enterprise Proof of Concepts, and ultimately close business. You will leverage your expertise, best practices and reference architectures highlighting Snowflake’s Data Platform capabilities across data ingestion, transformation, and lakehouse workloads. You are equally comfortable in both a business and technical context, interacting with executives and talking shop with technical audiences.

IN THIS ROLE YOU WILL GET TO:

• Apply your multi-cloud data architecture expertise while presenting Snowflake technology and vision to executives and technical contributors at strategic prospects, customers, and partners
• Work hands-on with prospects and customers to demonstrate and communicate the value of Snowflake technology throughout the sales cycle, from demo to proof of concept to design and implementation
• Immerse yourself in the ever-evolving industry, maintaining a deep understanding of competitive and complementary technologies and vendors and how to position Snowflake in relation to them
• Collaborate with Product Management, Engineering, and Marketing to continuously improve Snowflake’s products and marketing

ON DAY ONE, WE WILL EXPECT YOU TO HAVE:

• 10+ years of architecture and data engineering experience within the Enterprise Data space
• 5+ years experience within a pre-sales environment (Sales Engineer, Solutions Engineer, Solutions Architect, etc…)
• Outstanding presentation skills to both technical and executive audiences, whether impromptu on a whiteboard or using presentations and demos.
• Ability to connect a customer’s specific business problems and Snowflake’s solutions
• Ability to do deep discovery of customer’s architecture framework and connect those with Snowflake Data Architecture.
• Broad range of experience within large-scale Database and/or Data Warehouse technology, ETL, analytics and cloud technologies. For example, Data Lake, Data Mesh, Data Fabric
• Hands on Development experience with technologies such as SQL, Python, Pandas, Spark, PySpark, Hadoop, Hive and any other Big data technologies
• Deep understanding of data integration services and tools for building ETL and ELT data pipelines such as Apache NiFi, Matillion, Fivetran, Qlik, or Informatica.
• Familiarity with streaming technologies (ex. Kafka, Flink, Spark Streaming, Kinesis) and real-time or near real time use cases (ex. CDC)
• Experience designing interoperable data lakehouse architectures and experience working with Iceberg, Delta, and Parquet
• Strong architectural expertise in data engineering to confidently present and demo to business executives and technical audiences, and effectively handle any impromptu questions
• Bachelor’s Degree required, Masters Degree in computer science, engineering, mathematics or related fields, or equivalent experience preferred

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.

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