Staff Software Engineer - Unistore

Snowflake; Menlo Park (CA); On-site; USD 236,000 - 339,250; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision insurance

401(k) retirement plan

Flexible spending accounts

Paid time off and holidays

Parental leave

Job summary

Snowflake is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join the Unistore team in Menlo Park, California. The role involves developing a unique distributed database system and optimizing query algorithms, requiring strong skills in C++ or Java along with 8+ years of industry experience.

The position offers the opportunity to work in a fast-paced environment, focusing on building large-scale systems while contributing to the evolving Snowflake Data Cloud. Competitive salary range between $236,000 - $339,250 along with an equity plan and robust benefits package are included.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of industry experience working on commercial or open-source software.
• Strong fluency in C++ or Java.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and a deep understanding of Computer Science fundamentals.
• Experience with implementation testing, debugging, and documentation in a Linux environment.

Responsibilities

• Participate in the development of a unique distributed database system.
• Design and implement novel query optimization algorithms.
• Develop and support a petabyte-scale cloud database system.
• Own end-to-end delivery of projects.

Skills

C++

Java

Problem-solving skills

Multi-threading

Concurrency

Education

BS in Computer Science

Masters or PhD Preferred

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.

Snowflake is a high‑growth, cloud‑native data platform company committed to empowering enterprises to achieve their full potential. With a culture built on impact, innovation, and collaboration, we offer an environment where you can build large‑scale systems, move fast, and take your technology career to the next level.

We are seeking a highly talented and experienced Staff Software Engineer to join the Unistore team in our Database Engineering org. The Unistore team is building a unified hybrid data platform that dissolves the boundaries between operational and analytical workloads. Our core product, Hybrid Tables, enables enterprises to manage both transactional and analytical data in a single place. By eliminating the need to move data between separate operational databases and analytical warehouses, we simplify architectures, reduce ETL complexity, and unlock high‑performance, real‑time application serving—all while maintaining Snowflake’s industry‑leading scale, performance, and ACID compliance.

Joining this team means architecting the performance, scalability, and service infrastructure that will empower the world’s largest enterprises to seamlessly govern their transactional and analytical data in one place. If you are passionate about building industry‑leading technologies that solve real‑world scale and performance problems, this is the place to be. In this role, you will be a key contributor to the evolution of our core product: an elastic, large‑scale, high‑performance data processing system. We are looking for smart, enthusiastic engineers who can quickly master complex technical areas and are passionate about building new, industry‑leading technologies.

AS A STAFF SOFTWARE ENGINEER AT SNOWFLAKE, YOU WILL:

• Participate in the development of a unique distributed database system combining high scalability and performance with rich ACID transactions.
• Identify strategically important problems, inefficiencies or opportunities for impactful improvements.
• Design and implement novel query optimization or distributed data processing algorithms to maintain Snowflake’s industry‑leading data warehousing capabilities.
• Design, develop, and support a petabyte‑scale cloud database system, ensuring it is highly parallel and fault‑tolerant.
• Develop and implement the new service architecture required to enable the next generation of the Snowflake Data Cloud.
• Analyze, understand, and resolve complex performance and scalability bottlenecks within the system.
• Own the end‑to‑end delivery of your projects, including identifying solutions, design, implementation, rigorous testing, and safe production rollout.
• Ensure operational readiness and execute production operations of services, meeting our customer commitments for durability, availability, and performance.
• Build high‑quality, highly reliable software that meets the demands of the world’s largest companies.
• Develop tools to provide customers with greater insight into their workloads.
• Evangelize best practices for database usage and end‑to‑end system architecture.
• Mentor and support the professional growth of junior engineers on the team.

OUR IDEAL STAFF SOFTWARE ENGINEER WILL HAVE:

• 8+ years of industry experience working on commercial or open‑source software.
• Strong fluency in C++ or Java.
• Excellent problem‑solving skills and a deep understanding of Computer Science fundamentals, including data structures, algorithms, and distributed systems.
• Strong systems programming skills, including experience with multi‑threading and concurrency.
• A solid foundation in distributed systems concepts (e.g., consistency, scaling, failure recovery).
• Experience with implementation testing, debugging, and documentation, specifically within a Linux development environment.
• BS in Computer Science; Masters or PhD Preferred.
• Intense curiosity, willingness to question and passion for making systems better.

BONUS POINTS FOR EXPERIENCE WITH THE FOLLOWING:

• SQL or other database technologies including internal design and implementation.
• Query optimization, query execution, compiler design and implementation.
• Experience with internals of distributed key value stores like FoundationDB and storage engines like RocksDB, InnoDB, BerkeleyDB etc.
• Experience with MySQL, PostgreSQL internals.
• Data warehouse design, database systems, and large‑scale data processing solutions like Hadoop and Spark.
• Experience in database replication technology.
• Big data storage technologies and their applications, e.g., HDFS, Cassandra, Columnar Databases.

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.

How do you want to make your impact?

For jobs located in the United States, please visit the Snowflake Careers Site for salary and benefits information.

• The estimated base salary range for this role is $236,000 - $339,250.
• Additionally, this role is eligible to participate in Snowflake’s bonus and equity plan.

The successful candidate’s starting salary will be determined based on permissible, non‑discriminatory factors such as skills, experience, and geographic location. This role is also eligible for a competitive benefits package that includes medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance; a 401(k) retirement plan; flexible spending and health savings accounts; at least 12 paid holidays; paid time off; parental leave; an employee assistance program; and other company benefits.