Senior Software Engineer - Observe Data Management

Snowflake; Menlo Park (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 287,500; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision insurance

401(k) retirement plan

Paid time off and parental leave

Job summary

Snowflake is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Observe Data Management team in Menlo Park, California. This role involves designing and scaling data ingestion pipelines for a petabyte-scale observability platform. The ideal candidate will have over 5 years of experience in software engineering, proficiency in Go and/or C++, and expertise in distributed systems. A competitive compensation range of $200,000 to $287,500 is offered along with a comprehensive benefits package.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience with deep expertise in distributed systems.
• Ability to write high-performance, production-grade systems code.
• Hands-on experience building and running services across major cloud providers.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and scale high-throughput data ingestion and processing pipelines.
• Develop performance-critical, distributed systems components in Go and/or C++.
• Collaborate with teams to define data reliability standards.

Skills

Proficiency in Go

Proficiency in C++

Distributed systems expertise

User empathy

Education

B.S. in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience

Tools

AWS

Azure

OpenTelemetry SDKs

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.

Observe by Snowflake is an AI‑powered observability platform built on the Snowflake AI Data Cloud and engineered for scale. We ingest and store logs, metrics, traces, and events on an open, scalable data lakehouse using open formats like Apache Iceberg — at dramatically lower cost. A dynamic Context Graph and chat‑based AI SRE provide rich context and automated workflows so teams can move from detection to root cause and resolution 10x faster.

Leading engineering teams at companies like Capital One, Topgolf, and Dialpad rely on Observe to troubleshoot hundreds of terabytes of telemetry daily while maintaining reliability at enterprise scale. As part of Snowflake, Observe combines startup‑style ownership and velocity with the global reach, operational excellence, and ecosystem of one of the world’s leading data platforms.

We are hiring a Senior Software Engineer for the Observe Data Management team. This team owns the core pipelines that ingest and process over 1 petabyte of telemetry data per day — the foundational infrastructure powering Observe’s entire observability stack. You’ll be working at the intersection of massive scale, open‑source innovation, and real‑world reliability challenges for enterprise customers around the globe.

AS A SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER – OBSERVE DATA MANAGEMENT AT SNOWFLAKE, YOU WILL:

• Design, build, and scale high‑throughput data ingestion and processing pipelines handling petabyte‑scale telemetry — logs, metrics, traces, and events
• Develop performance‑critical, distributed systems components in Go and/or C++ that operate reliably across AWS and Azure
• Contribute to OpenTelemetry and drive Observe’s open‑source strategy, including external community engagement and upstream contributions
• Architect solutions that maintain enterprise‑grade availability and low latency under extreme data volumes
• Collaborate with SRE, product, and platform teams to define data reliability standards and improve detection‑to‑resolution times for customers
• Debug and resolve complex distributed systems issues at the deepest layers of the stack
• Help shape the technical roadmap for the Data Management team and mentor engineers across the organization

OUR IDEAL SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER – OBSERVE DATA MANAGEMENT WILL HAVE:

• 5+ years of software engineering experience with deep expertise in distributed systems
• Proficiency in Go and/or C++, with an ability to write high‑performance, production‑grade systems code
• Demonstrated experience designing and operating large‑scale data ingestion or stream processing pipelines
• A strong sense of user empathy and product intuition — you think beyond APIs and care about end‑to‑end data onboarding and management experience.
• Hands‑on experience building and running services across major cloud providers (AWS and/or Azure)
• Strong fundamentals in systems programming: concurrency, memory management, networking, and I/O
• A track record of solving hard infrastructure or platform engineering problems at scale
• B.S. in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience

BONUS POINTS FOR THE FOLLOWING:

• Experience with OpenTelemetry SDKs, instrumentation, or ecosystem tooling
• Prior open‑source contributions or project maintainership
• Familiarity with Apache Iceberg or other open table formats and data lakehouse architectures
• Background in observability, monitoring, or SRE
• Experience with multi‑cloud data infrastructure or telemetry platforms at petabyte scale

WHY JOIN OUR OBSERVE TEAM AT SNOWFLAKE?

The Observe team is building the future of AI‑powered observability — from the ground up, at a scale few engineering teams ever touch. You’ll have genuine ownership over systems that ingest and make sense of a petabyte of data per day, with a direct line from your work to the reliability and speed of enterprise customers who depend on Observe every hour of every day. And as part of Snowflake, you’ll do it with the backing of one of the world’s leading data platforms, while still moving with the velocity and ownership culture of a focused product team.

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.

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

The following represents the expected range of compensation for this role:

• The estimated base salary range for this role is $200,000 – $287,500.
• Additionally, this role is eligible to participate in Snowflake’s bonus and equity plan.

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.

To comply with pay transparency requirements and other statutes, you can notify us if you believe that a job posting is not compliant by completing this form.