TL;DR

Principal AI Engineer (AI): Defining the long-term technical vision and architectural design for Snowflake Intelligence, focusing on leading the deployment of LLM-based applications at massive scale. Focus on tackling frontier problems in agentic reasoning, NL-to-SQL, and enterprise-scale RAG, and driving industry-leading reliability for LLM performance across diverse customer schemas.

Location: Onsite in Menlo Park, CA, United States. This role is restricted to candidates located in the United States.

Salary: $264K–$379.5K

Company

Snowflake is the AI Data Cloud, building the foundational intelligence layer for the world’s data, empowering enterprises to achieve their full potential.

What you will do

  • Define the long-term technical vision and lead architectural design for Snowflake Intelligence, including multi-agent systems and NL-to-SQL engines.
  • Establish methodology for measuring and guaranteeing LLM performance and drive industry-leading reliability through automated infrastructure.
  • Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to align AI capabilities with business goals, bridging research and production.
  • Design extensible context engineering patterns, including advanced function calling and semantic layer integration.
  • Act as a technical North Star and force multiplier, mentoring Staff and Senior engineers and leading cross-functional strike teams.

Requirements

  • Experience: 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years specifically leading the deployment of LLM-based applications at massive scale.
  • Education: Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Computer Science, AI, or a related field.
  • Expertise: Deep understanding of LLM orchestration, prompt optimization, semantic modeling, and building robust guardrails.
  • Systems Thinking: Proven track record of designing complex systems integrating AI with traditional data stacks.
  • Communication: Exceptional ability to communicate complex technical trade-offs to both executive leadership and ICs.
  • Proven Impact: Previously held a Principal or equivalent high-level IC role, or led the technical launch of a major AI product.

Culture & Benefits

  • Culture focused on impact, innovation, and collaboration.
  • Opportunity for building big, moving fast, and taking technology and careers to the next level.
  • Scaling the Cortex platform, including Snowflake Intelligence, Cortex Agents, Analyst, and Search.
  • Working to define the next decade of enterprise computing.
  • Team values challenge ordinary thinking and pushing the pace of innovation.