Snowflake Staff Software Engineer to lead design and implementation of Spark query compilation and runtime integration at Snowflake. Responsible for technical leadership, architectural decisions, and mentoring engineers.
Responsibilities
In partnership with compiler, query engine, runtime, and product teams, you will translate customer needs into focused technical priorities and measurable engineering outcomes. You will lead through technical judgment, hands-on execution, mentorship, and influence—not through formal reporting relationships.
Lead the technical design and implementation of Spark query compilation and runtime integration, including intermediate representations, type resolution, semantic compatibility, query-plan transformations, and efficient SQL generation.
Own complex engineering initiatives from problem definition and architecture through implementation, validation, and production rollout.
Provide technical leadership to project teams by clarifying engineering trade-offs, aligning contributors, reviewing designs and code, and resolving technical blockers.
Improve end-to-end workload performance and cost-efficiency through profiling, compilation-latency reduction, metadata-access improvements, and collaboration with query-engine teams.
Establish strong correctness and compatibility practices, including differential testing against Apache Spark, regression coverage, and clear handling of unsupported behavior.
Drive production quality for owned components, including observability, incident investigation, fault recovery, and safe rollout practices.
Mentor engineers through design discussions, code reviews, debugging, and knowledge sharing, strengthening the team’s technical capabilities.
Partner with senior technical leaders and Product Management to prioritize investments, identify dependencies, and scope deliverable engineering milestones.
Validate changes against representative customer workloads and track measurable improvements in compatibility, latency, reliability, and cost-efficiency.
Qualification
A track record of designingProficiency in ScalaStrong systems fundamentalsExperience with Apache Spark internalsExperience with relational algebraExperience with Scala/JVM performanceA degree in Computer ScienceSnowflake is growing fastHow do you want to make your impact?
Required
10+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, including substantial work on compilers, query-processing systems, or runtime infrastructure.
Demonstrated experience serving as a technical lead for complex engineering initiatives, guiding engineers and coordinating delivery without requiring formal management authority.
A track record of designing, implementing, and delivering production systems, with ownership of significant architectural and implementation decisions.
Deep expertise in at least one relevant area, such as compiler architecture and IR transformations, relational query processing, language semantics and type systems, or runtime integration.
Proficiency in Scala, Java, C++, or a comparable implementation language, with the ability to write and review production code.
Strong systems fundamentals, including concurrency, memory behavior, and performance analysis, together with experience debugging complex production issues.
Ability to translate technical and customer requirements into practical engineering priorities and collaborate effectively across teams and locations.
Strong technical communication and mentorship skills, including the ability to build alignment around architectural decisions and explain complex trade-offs.
Preferred
Experience with Apache Spark internals, Catalyst, Spark Connect, or DataFrame APIs.
Experience with relational algebra, SQL generation, query optimization, or database execution systems.
Experience with Scala/JVM performance, native runtime functions, metadata caching, or compilation-performance optimization.
Experience building compatibility-test frameworks, differential testing, performance benchmarks, or production observability for data systems.
Experience technically leading systems through customer adoption, production hardening, and staged releases.
A degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
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.
