Principal Software Engineer - Developer Platform

Snowflake is about empowering enterprises to achieve their full potential — and people too. With a culture that’s all in on impact, innovation, and collaboration, Snowflake is the sweet spot for building big, moving fast, and taking technology — and careers — to the next level.

The Developer Platform team is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to lead the design and implementation of the next generation of our drivers and client-side tools. This is a unique opportunity to shape the core of how developers and enterprises interact with the Snowflake AI Data Cloud.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will drive the innovation and strategic direction of our entire driver ecosystem, which includes our Python, JDBC, ODBC, Go, .NET, and Node.js drivers, as well as the emerging ADBC initiative. Your work will directly impact the speed, reliability, and user experience for thousands of engineers and data professionals around the world.

What You’ll Do

• Innovate and Strategize: Take ownership of the technical and strategic direction for all Snowflake drivers. Anticipate future industry trends and proactively identify new ways to improve our products, processes, and overall developer experience.

• Lead with Impact: Drive significant engineering efforts, providing hands-on technical contribution and oversight across multiple functional areas. You will be a key decision-maker on complex technical issues, directly influencing the architecture and product roadmap.

• Solve Complex Challenges: Tackle highly complex, multi-faceted problems within our driver suite and across the distributed systems they connect to. You'll architect solutions that solve critical pain points for our customers at a global scale.

• Contribute to Open Source: Lead the development and maintenance of our open-source drivers, engaging with the developer community, and setting the standard for how we ship open-source software.

• Mentor and Influence: Serve as a technical leader, influencing our engineering culture and inspiring more junior engineers to tackle big challenges with a can-do attitude. You will work with tech leads and managers across teams to define and secure projects.

Our Ideal Principal Software Engineer Will Have

• 12+ years of industry experience designing, building, and supporting large-scale distributed systems and client-side tools.

• Deep expertise in developing client-side tools and libraries. Experience with a variety of programming languages (e.g., Python, Java, C++, Go, Node.js) and their respective ecosystems is highly desirable.

• A strong track record of technical leadership and a reputation as a respected domain expert. You are recognized as a source of new ideas and a key contributor on a strategic level.

• Experience with the complexities of open-source development, including community engagement, release processes, and managing a robust open-source project.

• A comprehensive understanding of data engineering workflows and the enterprise data landscape. You are product-oriented and can anticipate the needs of our customers.

• Excellent problem-solving skills, with a proven ability to provide leadership and clarity in the face of challenging trade-offs and ambiguous outcomes.

• BS in Computer Science; Masters or PhD preferred.

Why Join the Drivers Team?

• Impact: Your work will directly power how developers, data scientists, and applications worldwide connect to the Snowflake AI Data Cloud.

• Challenge: You’ll solve cutting-edge problems at massive scale, from performance tuning to designing universal driver cores.

• Autonomy: You’ll have the freedom to shape architectural direction and lead initiatives that will define the future of our developer tools.

• Prestige: This isn’t just a job; it’s a chance to build the very foundation of the data revolution, tackling distributed systems problems at a scale few companies can offer.

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?