Software Engineer — Cloud Infrastructure Optimization

Snorkel AI; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 172,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a forward-thinking company on a mission to democratize AI by improving cloud infrastructure and cost management. As an engineer in the Infrastructure team, you will play a crucial role in optimizing cloud usage and driving efficiency across various platforms. Your expertise in Python and cloud services will help shape the future of AI data development. With a hybrid work schedule and a commitment to diversity, this innovative firm offers an inclusive environment where your contributions will make a significant impact. If you are passionate about technology and eager to make a difference, this opportunity is perfect for you.

Benefits

Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans

Yearly wellness stipend

401k program

Parental leave up to 20 weeks

Workstation setup allowance

Qualifications

• 3+ years of software development experience with strong Python skills.
• Deep understanding of cloud providers like AWS, Azure, or GCP.

Responsibilities

• Establish centralized cost management and optimization strategies.
• Collaborate with teams to improve cloud strategies and resource efficiency.

Skills

Python Development

Cloud Cost Optimization

Kubernetes

Infrastructure Management

Observability Systems

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

Datadog

AWS Cost Explorer

Job description

We’re on a mission to democratize AI by building the definitive AI data development platform. The AI landscape has gone through incredible change between 2016, when Snorkel started as a research project in the Stanford AI Lab, to the generative AI breakthroughs of today. But one thing has remained constant: the data you use to build AI is the key to achieving differentiation, high performance, and production-ready systems. We work with some of the world’s largest organizations to empower scientists, engineers, financial experts, product creators, journalists, and more to build custom AI with their data faster than ever before. Excited to help us redefine how AI is built? Apply to be the newest Snorkeler!

We are looking for an engineer for our Infrastructure team to help us improve and manage the efficiency, usage, and cost of our cloud and overall infrastructure.

Primary Responsibilities

• Establish Snorkel’s FinOps engineering practice to drive centralized cost management and optimization strategies.
• Provide visibility into metrics, performance, usage, and cost across infrastructure and related SaaS tools used at Snorkel (e.g., Datadog, LaunchDarkly).
• Stay up-to-date on evolving cloud pricing models, available discounts, industry trends, and best practices across AWS, Azure, GCP, and beyond.
• Advise enterprise customers on understanding Snorkel’s product from an efficiency perspective and suggest optimization strategies.
• Contribute to the design and improvement of observability and alerting systems for Snorkel’s SaaS and PaaS platforms.
• Collaborate closely with infrastructure teams to continuously evolve our Kubernetes and broader cloud strategies.
• Partner with engineering teams to provide design suggestions that improve resource efficiency and reduce operational cost.
• Build dashboards, tools, and reports to highlight high-cost areas and forecast future expenses for leadership visibility.
• Contribute to Snorkel’s engineering culture through mentorship, open communication, user empathy, and advocacy of strong engineering practices.

Work a hybrid schedule, with three days per week in our Redwood City HQ or San Francisco office.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong development and debugging skills in Python.
• 3+ years of experience in software development (academic experience included).
• Deep understanding of at least one major cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and the Kubernetes ecosystem.
• Experience with optimization and desire to take ownership of our cloud workloads to identify inefficiencies and recommend cost-saving opportunities (e.g., optimizing EKS node utilization, recommending appropriate EC2 instance types, etc.).

Preferred Qualifications

Successful candidates will likely have most of the following. These are guidelines, not strict requirements:

• Strong experience in designing, building, and managing cloud infrastructure for enterprise platforms on AWS, GCP, or Azure (e.g., EC2, EKS, VPC).
• Experience working at high-growth technology startups, and able to balance agility and clarity with rigor and long-term sustainability.
• Proficient with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform, CloudFormation, or Helm.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD systems and test infrastructure for large, complex codebases.
• Familiarity with cloud cost monitoring and reporting tools such as Kubecost, AWS Cost Explorer, Datadog Cloud Cost Management, Cast AI, or similar.

Nice to have

• Hands-on experience working with LLMs and API providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Amazon Bedrock.
• Experience creating and maintaining observability dashboards using platforms like New Relic, Datadog, or Grafana.
• Experience building and maintaining cost visibility dashboards for various cloud services.

The salary range for this position based in the San Francisco Bay Area is $172,000.00 - $240,000.00. All offers include equity compensation in the form of employee stock options.

Be Your Best At Snorkel

Snorkel AI is on a mission to make machine learning practical for everyone, and it starts with building a team that welcomes, represents, and gives opportunity to all. We work at the frontier of AI and software engineering, and believe that underrepresented communities need to play a part in shaping the future of these fields. At Snorkel AI, we actively work to create an environment that values end-to-end ownership, diverse forms of impact, and opportunities for personal growth.

Snorkelers are supported by an amazing team and an amazing set of benefits. For Full-time employees, we offer comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans for Snorkelers and their families, plus a yearly wellness stipend. Our 401k program lets Snorkelers plan for their future and our parental leave program lets new parents take up to 20 weeks of paid time off. Learn more about these benefits and more — like our workstation setup allowance — on our Careers page.

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. Snorkel AI prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type on the basis of race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, performance, merit, and business need.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

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