Principal Software Engineer - Observability

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

Job summary

Snowflake seeks a Principal Software Engineer I for its Observability team to build an AI-driven platform that helps customers understand and resolve issues quickly as workloads grow. You will shape technical direction, own outcomes, and ship high-impact observability capabilities.

You will contribute across product and design teams, raise engineering standards, and mentor engineers while building scalable pipelines and open standards like OpenTelemetry.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience including technical leadership across backend, infrastructure, or data platforms.
• Experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Proficiency in a backend language such as Java, Go, or C++, and cloud experience.
• AI-first engineering mindset with ability to apply AI across the software lifecycle.
• Experience shipping products to external customers and guiding adoption.
• Strong written communication and mentoring abilities.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build distributed infrastructure for logs, metrics, traces, and events at high scale.
• Ship observability products from telemetry to dashboards and diagnostics with customer impact.
• Develop agentic AI-driven detection and diagnosis across the stack.
• Build AI-first capabilities and ensure security and reliability standards.
• Lead architecture through adoption with intuitive APIs and SDKs.
• Mentor engineers and influence cross-team decisions.

Skills

Distributed systems

Java

Go

C++

AWS/Azure/Google Cloud

AI-first engineering

Mentoring engineers

Education

BS or MS in Computer Science or related field

Tools

OpenTelemetry

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.

Build the foundation for faster, safer innovation.

Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud supports critical enterprise workloads across multiple clouds and regions. As AI accelerates software development, the volume and pace of change are outgrowing what engineers can manually review, coordinate, and monitor. Moving faster requires systems that make understanding, diagnosing, and resolving issues an integral part of how customers and engineers work.

The Observability team builds the telemetry, analytics, and diagnostic platform that helps Snowflake customers and engineers understand the health of their workloads and services, detect problems early, and resolve them quickly. We’re looking for a hands‑on, product‑minded Principal Software Engineer I to help build an AI‑driven observability platform, combining deep distributed‑systems engineering with a strong instinct for what customers and developers need.

You will shape technical direction, solve challenging systems problems, and lead initiatives from concept to customer launch across engineering, product, and design. The opportunity is to build a platform where AI agents and engineers detect, diagnose, and resolve issues together, so that growing scale and complexity translate into faster answers rather than more manual investigation.

AS A PRINCIPAL SOFTWARE ENGINEER AT SNOWFLAKE YOU WILL:

• Architect and build distributed infrastructure. Design scalable pipelines and services for ingesting, storing, and querying logs, metrics, traces, and events at very high volume, with predictable cost, low query latency, fault isolation, and clear data‑freshness guarantees.
• Ship observability products to customers. Partner with product management and design to define and deliver customer‑facing capabilities, from telemetry collection and alerting to dashboards and diagnostics, that work natively within Snowflake. Turn customer feedback and usage data into product decisions, and own outcomes through launch and adoption.
• Build AI‑driven detection and diagnosis. Develop agentic workflows that correlate signals across the stack, surface anomalies, explain likely root causes, and recommend or take remediation steps. Ground these capabilities in high‑quality telemetry and rigorous evaluation so customers and engineers can trust them.
• Build and work AI‑first. Make AI integral to how you design, implement, test, and operate software. Establish rigorous evaluation, security, and reliability standards for AI‑powered capabilities, and drive adoption of AI‑first practices across the team.
• Lead from architecture through adoption. Translate ambiguous customer and developer needs into practical designs and milestones. Deliver intuitive APIs, SDKs, and self‑service experiences built on open standards such as OpenTelemetry, and guide incremental migrations from existing tooling.
• Raise the engineering bar. Write and review production code, diagnose complex failures, own operational outcomes, and mentor engineers. Influence across teams through technical depth, clear communication, and sound judgment.

OUR IDEAL PRINCIPAL SOFTWARE ENGINEER WILL HAVE:

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including technical leadership of complex backend, infrastructure, or data‑platform initiatives spanning multiple teams.
• Deep experience designing, building, and operating large‑scale distributed systems, with strong understanding of concurrency, consistency, caching, failure recovery, storage and query efficiency, and performance.
• Strong computer science 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: you actively use AI throughout the software lifecycle and can demonstrate how it improves your execution, problem‑solving, and quality. You are ready to build AI‑powered platform capabilities and help others adopt this approach.
• A track record of shipping products to external customers: partnering with product and design, turning ambiguous problems into delivered systems, making scope and quality trade‑offs, and driving adoption, reliability, and customer satisfaction after launch.
• Clear written communication, low‑ego collaboration, strong ownership, and experience mentoring senior engineers.
• A degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Especially relevant:

Experience building observability, monitoring, or analytics platforms (logs, metrics, traces, alerting); OpenTelemetry; time‑series or columnar storage; AIOps or agentic diagnosis systems; or developer‑facing data products.

Help build the platform that lets customers and engineers understand and resolve issues faster than manual investigation allows, with the scale and trust that critical workloads demand.

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?

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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