Staff Software Engineer - Ingestion

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

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.

Staff Software Engineer - File Ingestion (Customer-Facing Services)

Build the Future of the AI Data Cloud

Snowflake's File Ingestion team owns the core engines behind COPY INTO and Snowpipe - the primary arteries landing customer data into the AI Data Cloud at hundreds of petabytes per quarter.

We are expanding our core mission to build next-generation, external-facing ingestion services that directly expose file-ingest capabilities to external platforms, partner ecosystems, and customer applications.

As a Staff Software Engineer , you will lead the architectural vision and execution for these mission-critical, customer-facing services. You will operate at the intersection of high-throughput distributed systems, API platform design, and direct customer feature delivery, defining how enterprise data seamlessly flows into Snowflake at global scale.

What You'll Do

• Drive Technical Vision & Architecture: Define the multi-year architecture and technical strategy for high-throughput, external-facing ingestion services and APIs across multi-cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Deliver Customer-Facing Innovations: Lead the end-to-end execution of enterprise-grade external features, ensuring low-latency data landing, high availability, and seamless ecosystem integration (e.g., Snowpark Connect, partner connectors).
• Set Technical Direction: Author foundational design documents, establish technical standards for reliability, security, and scalability, and lead high-stakes architectural reviews across engineering orgs.
• Lead Cross-Functional Alignment: Partner closely with Principal Architects, Product Management, Security, and external developer platforms to translate customer requirements into resilient system architecture.
• Elevate Engineering Excellence: Mentor and sponsor Senior, Mid-level, and Junior engineers; raise the bar for system design, code quality, testing methodologies, and operational maturity.
• Direct Customer & Strategic Impact: Engage with enterprise customer engineering teams to solve complex integration challenges, debug production edge cases at scale, and turn direct customer feedback into core platform capabilities.

What We're Looking For

• 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 General Availability (GA) and global scale.
• Expert proficiency in Java or C++ (strong preference for engineers comfortable working across both systems-level C++ and managed service Java frameworks).
• Deep expertise in external API design, cloud service orchestration , and building resilient, multi-tenant customer-facing endpoints.
• Deep domain knowledge in at least one of the following: high-throughput ingestion pipelines, distributed query execution engines, messaging/streaming systems (e.g., Kafka, Pulsar), or database internals.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills with a demonstrated ability to drive technical consensus across cross-functional leadership, product partners, and external technical stakeholders.
• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Bonus Points

• Experience building and scaling external developer platforms, SDKs, or public SaaS APIs serving external consumers.
• Deep expertise with open table formats (Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake) and integration with ecosystems like Apache Spark or Ray.
• Advanced performance engineering expertise: memory management, SIMD, vectorization, lock-free data structures, or I/O optimization at PB-scale.
• Strong background in metadata management, transactional state machines, or consensus protocols (e.g., Raft, Paxos).
• Active contributor to open-source data infrastructure, cloud-native compute systems, or query engines.

Why This Team

Massive Strategic Impact: You will lead the expansion of Snowflake's most critical data-path surface into direct, customer-facing integrations that unlock new platform ecosystems and drive platform volume.

Broad Architectural Scope: Your work will bridge edge API layers, control-plane orchestrators, file scanners/parsers, query planners,