Staff/Principal AI Software Engineer - Snowflake CoWork

Snowflake • Menlo Park, CA

3d • $264,000 - $379,500

About The Position

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.

Requirements

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years specifically leading the deployment of LLM-based applications at massive scale.
• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in Computer Science, AI, or a related field.
• 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.
• Proven track record of designing complex systems that integrate AI with traditional data stacks (SQL, Retrieval Systems, Semantic Layers).
• 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.
• 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.

Responsibilities

• 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.
• Move beyond simple evals to build world-class, automated "hill-climbing" infrastructure.
• Establish the methodology for how Snowflake measures and guarantees LLM performance across diverse customer schemas.
• Partner with Product and Engineering leadership to align AI capabilities with business goals.
• Bridge the gap between Research (modeling) and Production (infra), ensuring the latest LLM breakthroughs are viable at Snowflake scale.
• Design extensible "context engineering" patterns—including advanced function calling and semantic layer integration—that can be leveraged by other Snowflake teams and external developers.
• Act as a force multiplier.
• Mentor Staff and Senior engineers, lead cross-functional "strike teams" on high-stakes projects, and foster a culture of technical excellence and rapid experimentation.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal