S Senior / Staff Software Engineer — Product (Backend-Focused) San Francisco, CA, US Principal Python Go Rust

ContentBuffer; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 208,000 - 315,000; Full time

Job summary

Snorkel AI in San Francisco and New York City is seeking Senior and Staff Product Engineers with strong backend experience to shape and deliver product capabilities for data cataloging, agent benchmarking, and workflow automation.

You will collaborate with Product, Design, and Engineering to translate user problems into durable backend features, build APIs and data models, and participate in architectural decisions focused on scalability and maintainability.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of software engineering experience.
• Strong backend or backend-oriented full-stack experience.
• Experience partnering with Product Managers and cross-functional teammates.
• Experience building backend services and APIs, and working with data stores and queries.
• Strong engineering fundamentals and the ability to write reliable, maintainable code.
• Ability to investigate technical problems, debug effectively, and make sound decisions within your area of ownership.
• Clear communication skills and the ability to explain technical decisions to both engineering and cross-functional partners.
• Ability to work independently while collaborating closely with a team.

Responsibilities

• Build, ship, and improve backend product capabilities from user problems through production.
• Partner with Product Managers, designers, and engineers to shape features and user-friendly experiences.
• Build and evolve APIs, services, data models, and workflow capabilities.
• Develop products for cataloging and searching data, benchmarking agent performance, and automating workflows.
• Investigate and resolve issues across services and data flows, including performance problems.
• Contribute to architectural decisions with focus on scalability and maintainability.
• Participate in code reviews and raise engineering quality.
• Identify opportunities to improve the product and underlying systems.
• Adhere to hybrid work schedule with at least three days/week in SF or NYC offices.

Skills

Backend development

APIs & services

System design

Cross-functional collaboration

Code quality & reviews

Debugging & problem solving

Tools

Python

Java

Go

Rust

C++

Job description

About Snorkel

Snorkel AI is the frontier AI data lab, helping teams build the data and environments behind high-performing frontier and agentic AI. We combine technology with research-driven AI data development to create datasets, benchmarks, evals, and custom solutions for real-world AI systems. Founded out of the Stanford AI Lab in 2019, Snorkel works with leading AI labs and enterprises to move from better data to better outcomes.

About the Role

We’re looking for Senior and Staff Product Engineers with strong backend engineering experience and a passion for building excellent products. You’ll help shape and deliver product capabilities that make complex workflows easier for users, from data cataloging and agent benchmarking to workflow automation.

Working closely with Product, Design, and Engineering, you’ll bring user problems into technical discussions and own backend features from concept through production. We value engineers who pair sound technical judgment with care for the quality, usability, and impact of the products they build.

What You’ll Do

• Build, ship, and improve backend product capabilities, owning work from understanding the user problem through design, implementation, launch, and production support.
• Partner closely with Product Managers, designers, and engineers to shape features and turn user needs into intuitive, reliable product experiences.
• Build and evolve APIs, services, data models, and workflow capabilities that support the product.
• Help develop products for cataloging and searching data, benchmarking agent performance, and automating post-production and delivery workflows.
• Investigate and resolve issues across services and data flows, including performance and production problems.
• Contribute to technical and architecture decisions, with attention to scalability, maintainability, and the needs of the product.
• Participate in code reviews and help raise the quality of the team’s engineering work.
• Identify opportunities to improve the product and its underlying systems, and propose practical solutions.
• Work a hybrid schedule, with at least three days per week in our San Francisco, CA or New York City office.

What We’re Looking For

We’re hiring Product Engineers at the Senior and Staff levels. We’re generally looking for candidates with 7+ years of software engineering experience, including:

• Strong backend or backend-oriented full-stack experience building and improving a product.
• A track record of contributing to polished, intuitive products that make complex tasks easier for users.
• Experience partnering with Product Managers and other cross-functional teammates to understand user needs and shape product features.
• Experience building and maintaining backend services and APIs, and working with data stores and queries.
• Strong engineering fundamentals and the ability to write reliable, maintainable code.
• The ability to investigate technical problems, debug effectively, and make sound decisions within your area of ownership.
• Clear communication skills and the ability to explain technical decisions to both engineering and cross-functional partners.
• The ability to work independently while collaborating closely with a team.

We value engineering fundamentals over experience with a particular language or framework. While we use Python it is not required; experience with Java, Go, Rust, C++, or another language is welcome so long as you can demonstrate strong engineering ability.

Nice to Have

• Experience with data-heavy products, such as products for organizing, cataloging, searching, or querying complex datasets.
• Experience with agent workflows, agent evaluations, benchmarking, or analyzing traces of agent activity.
• Experience building workflow automation; familiarity with DAGs is helpful but not required.
• Experience in developer tools or other products with sophisticated user workflows.
• Experience taking a product feature from an initial user problem through launch and continued improvement.

Why This Role

You’ll have meaningful ownership over a product used by technical and enterprise teams solving real, high-stakes problems. This isn't a feature-factory role — you'll be working on interfaces and the systems behind them to make genuinely complex workflows feel simple, with a team that cares deeply about craft.

Snorkel AI is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and is committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. Snorkel AI embraces diversity and provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment.

Actual compensation will be determined based on factors including skills, qualifications, experience, and geographic location.

Salary range(s) for this role

$208,000 — $315,000 USD

Be Your Best at Snorkel

Joining Snorkel AI means becoming part of a company that has market proven solutions, robust funding, and is scaling rapidly—offering a unique combination of stability and the excitement of high growth. As a member of our tea