10+ years of experience in large-scale distributed systems or database internals.
Strong programming skills in Java or C++.
Proven leadership in multi-team technical projects from design to production.
In-depth knowledge of consistency, transactions, and fault tolerance.
BS/MS in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience.
Responsibilities
Lead the design of core metadata and replication systems across teams.
Set technical direction for scalability, consistency, and fault tolerance.
Drive improvements in cross-region and cross-cloud replication.
Solve complex performance, availability, and correctness challenges at scale.
Collaborate with Product and architects to create durable designs based on customer needs.
Enhance operational standards through observability and safe rollouts.
Mentor senior engineers and develop technical leaders within the team.
Benefits
Opportunity to work on impactful distributed systems problems.
Collaborative environment with cross-functional teams.
Focus on innovation and challenging conventional thinking.
Growth potential in a rapidly scaling company.
Full Job Description
Staff Software Engineer - Metadata
Team Pitch
The Metadata team owns the brain of Snowflake. Every query, table, transaction, and permission depends on the metadata layer we build. Our systems handle millions of metadata operations per second. We also power cross-region and cross-cloud replication and failover, keeping customer data available through outages. If you want hard distributed-systems problems with direct customer impact, this is the team.
Responsibilities
Lead the design of core metadata and replication systems across multiple teams.
Set technical direction for scalability, consistency, and fault tolerance of the metadata layer.
Drive cross-region and cross-cloud replication toward lower RPO and higher reliability.
Solve hard problems in performance, availability, and correctness at global scale.
Partner with Product and architects to turn customer needs into durable designs.
Raise the operational bar through observability, safe rollouts, and blast-radius controls.
Mentor senior engineers and grow technical leaders on the team.
Requirements
Core Requirements:
10+ years building large-scale distributed systems or database internals.
Strong development skills in Java or C++.
Proven record leading multi-team technical initiatives from design to production.
Deep understanding of consistency, transactions, and fault tolerance.
BS/MS in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience.
Any of the following would make you a stronger candidate:
Experience with FoundationDB or other distributed key-value stores.
Experience building replication, disaster recovery, or geo-distributed systems.
Experience with database metadata, catalogs, or query compilation.
Experience running services on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
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
About Snowflake Computing
Snowflake is a cloud-based data-warehousing company that was founded in 2012. The company provides a data platform that allows customers to store and analyze data using cloud-based infrastructure. Snowflake's platform is designed to be highly scalable and flexible, allowing customers to easily add or remove computing resources as needed. The company's customers include a wide range of businesses, from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Snowflake has received significant funding from investors and has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing companies in the United States.
