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.
The Cortex CoWork team is defining the future of AI for enterprise data. Our mission is to transform how the world’s largest enterprises interact with their data through flagship products like Snowflake (CoWork) Intelligence.
As a Principal AI Engineer, you will be a technical North Star for our AI initiatives. You won't just execute on a roadmap; you will help define it. You will tackle the most complex, "frontier" problems in agentic reasoning, NL-to-SQL, and enterprise-scale RAG, ensuring our AI products are not only innovative but fundamentally reliable and scalable for the Fortune 500.
Technical Strategy & Architecture: Define the long-term technical vision for Snowflake Intelligence. Lead the architectural design of multi-agent systems, complex tool-use frameworks, and self-correcting NL-to-SQL engines.
Drive Industry-Leading Reliability: Move beyond simple evals to build world-class, automated "hill-climbing" infrastructure. You will establish the methodology for how Snowflake measures and guarantees LLM performance across diverse customer schemas.
Cross-Functional Influence: Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to align AI capabilities with business goals. You will bridge the gap between Research (modeling) and Production (infra), ensuring the latest LLM breakthroughs are viable at Snowflake scale.
Ecosystem Thinking: Design extensible "context engineering" patterns—including advanced function calling and semantic layer integration—that can be leveraged by other Snowflake teams and external developers.
Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Act as a force multiplier. You will mentor Staff and Senior engineers, lead cross-functional "strike teams" on high-stakes projects, and foster a culture of technical excellence and rapid experimentation.
Experience: 7+ years of software engineering experience, with 2+ 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, "under-the-hood" understanding of LLM orchestration. You should be an expert in prompt optimization, semantic modeling, and building robust guardrails for non-deterministic systems.
Systems Thinking: Proven track record of designing complex systems that integrate AI with traditional data stacks (SQL, Retrieval Systems, Semantic Layers).
Communication: Exceptional ability to communicate complex technical trade-offs to both executive leadership and ICs. You are as comfortable in a design doc as you are in a boardroom.
Proven Impact: You have previously held a "Principal" or equivalent high-level IC role, or have led the technical launch of a major AI product used by millions.Staff/Principal AI Software Engineer - Snowflake CoWork
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 job posting on the Snowflake Careers Site for salary and benefits information: careers.snowflake.com
Skills Required
- 10+ years of software engineering experience
- 3+ years leading deployment of LLM-based applications at massive scale
- Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science, AI, or a related field
- Deep expertise in LLM orchestration, prompt optimization, semantic modeling, and guardrails for non-deterministic systems
- Experience designing systems integrating AI with SQL, retrieval systems, and semantic layers
- Exceptional communication skills with technical and executive audiences
- Previous Principal-level individual contributor experience or leadership of a major AI product launch used by millions
Snowflake Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Snowflake and has not been reviewed or approved by Snowflake.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Pay is often characterized as top‑of‑market across multiple roles. The company also points to a Fair Pay Workplace certification, signaling externally reviewed pay‑equity practices.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity is a meaningful part of total compensation, with new‑hire grants, refresh potential, and a discounted ESPP with a favorable lookback. Feedback suggests this ownership component materially boosts perceived total rewards.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Parental leave is described as up to 26 weeks paid in the U.S., paired with flexible or generous PTO and multiple leave types. Family‑building benefits and a dedicated parental‑leave hub further expand support.
Snowflake Insights
What We Do
Snowflake powers the end-to-end data lifecycle – from ingesting and processing data to analyzing and modeling it, to building and sharing data and AI applications – helping engineers, analysts, and leaders innovate faster and achieve more with their data. We're on a mission to empower every enterprise to achieve its full potential through data and AI.
Why Work With Us
Snowflake is where data does more, and so do you. More innovating, more growing, and more collaborating. Here, you’ll find the sweet spot between building big and moving fast, in technology and your career.
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