Staff Software Engineer - External File Ingestion APIs

Snowflake; United States; On-site; USD 210,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Snowflake is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for File Ingestion (Customer-Facing Services) to lead the architectural vision and execution for high-throughput ingestion engines that land data into the Snowflake AI Data Cloud at scale.

You will shape external-facing APIs across multi-cloud environments, drive end-to-end delivery of enterprise features, and mentor engineers while coordinating with product and security teams to ensure reliability and ecosystem integrations.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems or cloud-native infrastructure in production.
• Proven track record of architectural leadership, having successfully taken complex, customer-facing services or external APIs from initial concept to GA and global scale.
• Expert proficiency in Java or C++ (strong preference for engineers comfortable with both).
• Deep expertise in external API design, cloud service orchestration, and building resilient, multi-tenant endpoints.
• Deep domain knowledge in high-throughput ingestion pipelines, distributed query engines, messaging/streaming systems, or database internals.
• Excellent written and verbal communication with ability to drive technical consensus across leadership, product partners, and external stakeholders.
• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

• Define the multi-year architecture and technical strategy for high-throughput, external-facing ingestion services and APIs across multi-cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Lead the end-to-end execution of enterprise-grade external features, ensuring low-latency data landing, high availability, and ecosystem integration.
• Author foundational design documents, establish technical standards for reliability, security, and scalability, and lead architectural reviews.
• Partner with Principal Architects, Product Management, Security, and external developer platforms to translate customer requirements into resilient system architecture.
• Mentor and sponsor Senior, Mid-level, and Junior engineers; raise the bar for system design, testing methodologies, and operational maturity.
• Engage with enterprise customer engineering teams to solve complex integration challenges and turn feedback into platform capabilities.

Skills

Distributed systems

Architectural leadership

Java

C++

API design

Cloud platforms

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science or Computer Engineering

Tools

Kafka

Pulsar

Apache Iceberg

Delta Lake

Spark

Ray

Job description

Snowflake is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for File Ingestion (Customer-Facing Services) to lead the architectural vision and execution for high-throughput ingestion engines that land data into the Snowflake AI Data Cloud at scale.

You will shape external-facing APIs across multi-cloud environments, drive end-to-end delivery of enterprise features, and mentor engineers while coordinating with product and security teams to ensure reliability and ecosystem integrations.