---
title: 'Software Engineer Manager, Data Processing at Snowflake'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-manager-data-processing-snowflake-zurich-fj3c3kxdfy0m'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-06'
---

# Software Engineer Manager, Data Processing at Snowflake

- **Company:** [Snowflake](https://feeny.ai/companies/snowflake)
- **Location:** Zurich, Switzerland
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-10-26
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-06
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/snowflake/499b0652-047b-48a9-a056-2083b8d53bab

## Job description

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. Observe by Snowflake is an AI-powered observability platform built on the Snowflake AI Data Cloud and engineered for scale. We ingest and store logs, metrics, traces, and events on an open, scalable data lakehouse, using open formats like Apache Iceberg, at dramatically lower cost. A dynamic Context Graph and chat-based AI SRE provide rich context and automated workflows so teams can move from detection to root cause of production issue and resolution 10x faster. Leading engineering teams at companies like Capital One, Topgolf, and Dialpad rely on Observe to troubleshoot hundreds of terabytes of telemetry daily while maintaining reliability at enterprise scale. As part of Snowflake, Observe combines startup-style ownership and velocity with the global reach, operational excellence, and ecosystem of one of the world's leading data platforms.

The Team We are hiring an Engineering Manager to lead our Data Processing team in Zurich. You will start with a pizza sized team with the goal to grow further. The team owns the core engine that makes Observe work. That includes the systems that compiles our query language OPAL into SQL, the query execution pipeline that executes user queries, the scheduler which autoscales warehouses and packs workloads for high utilization and low query latencies, and our incremental view maintenance. Building features in these systems while keeping the system healthy, cost-efficient, and resilient at petabyte scale is a constant challenge. The team sits at the heart of Observe's differentiation: a full observability platform built entirely on Snowflake.

In this role you will

- Lead, mentor, and grow a team of backend engineers working on compiler internals, distributed scheduling, query execution, and data materialization. Coach them on their careers and help each of them reach their full potential.
- Hire top talent, and represent Observe and Snowflake to candidates.
- Work closely with other Observe product and backend teams to plan and execute new product features and scale existing systems to meet new challenges.
- Work with core Snowflake engineering teams in Germany and the US to integrate Observe more deeply with Snowflake technologies. Communicate Observe's needs clearly and drive improvements in the underlying platform together.
- Strategically reduce technical debt in the area. Know where it lives, build a plan to pay it down, and balance that plan against new feature work.
- Keep many ongoing projects moving in parallel, setting clear priorities and making sure nothing important falls through the cracks.
- Own the operational health of the area: performance, compute cost efficiency, on-call load, and support cost. Lead the team through production incidents and customer escalations, and drive postmortems and follow-up work.
- Stay close to the code: write, review, and fix code when needed, and dig into real production workloads alongside the team.

## Qualifications

- Proven record managing a team of 5+ engineers that delivered complex backend or infrastructure systems in a fast-paced environment.
- A background in database systems, such as query processing, query optimization, storage, or compilers.
- Solid experience building and operating distributed systems.
- Hands-on engineering skills: able to write, review, and fix production code.
- Able to run many concurrent projects at once and to prioritize clearly between them.
- Able to balance short-term operational needs with long-term architecture, and to make cost and performance tradeoffs based on data.
- Experience running a team that owns production services with on-call responsibilities.
- Excellent communicator, comfortable working across time zones and organizational boundaries.
- A bachelor's, master's, or doctorate degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field.

Bonus Points

- Experience with Snowflake or other large-scale data platforms or databases and knowledge of their internals.
- Familiarity with the observability space.
- Experience building an enterprise-grade SaaS product.

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](http://careers.snowflake.com)

## About Snowflake

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Snowflake provides an AI Data Cloud platform that enables enterprises to store, analyze, and securely share their data across multiple clouds and geographies.
- **Entity Type**: Public (NYSE: SNOW)
- **Headquarters**: Bozeman, Montana, United States
- **Founded**: 2012
- **Founders**: Not explicitly listed in the provided search results (widely known co-founders include Benoit Dageville, Thierry Cruanes, Marcin Zukowski – not verified in these search results)

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Enterprise software, cloud data platform
- **Target Customers**: B2B, including large enterprises (e.g., hundreds of the world’s largest companies), mid-market, and SMBs
- **Mission**: “To Mobilize the World’s Data” (Glassdoor) and “empower every enterprise to achieve its full potential through data and AI” (Snowflake Careers page)

## Products & Services
- **Snowflake AI Data Cloud**: A unified, multi-cloud platform that combines data warehousing, data lakes, data sharing, and AI/ML capabilities. Customers can discover, share, and analyze data while running analytic workloads across public clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP).
- **Snowflake Marketplace**: A marketplace for discovering and accessing third‑party data sets and applications.
- **Snowflake‑Powered Applications**: Platform for building and deploying data‑intensive applications.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not directly provided in search results (as a public company, market cap fluctuates and is available on financial websites).
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue – $1 to $5 billion (USD) per Glassdoor.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not explicitly mentioned in the search results (historically backed by Sequoia Capital, Dragoneer, etc. – not verified here).
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Named #1 on the 2023 Fortune Future 50 List ([Fortune.com](https://fortune.com))
  - Listed as a U.S. Best Large Place to Work by BuiltIn in 2024
  - Recognized as one of the “20 Coolest Cloud Software Companies” by CRN in 2022 and 2024
  - Headcount of 5,001–10,000 employees with 30 global locations; actively hiring
  - Revenue range $1B–$5B indicates strong scale

## Competitive Advantages
- **Multi‑Cloud Flexibility**: Operates across AWS, Azure, and GCP, avoiding vendor lock‑in.
- **Unified Data Experience**: One platform for data sharing, analytics, and AI, reducing silos.
- **Separation of Compute and Storage**: Allows independent scaling and cost efficiency (not detailed in provided sources, but a known differentiator).
- **Strong Ecosystem**: Data marketplace and extensive partner network.

## Strategic Focus
- **AI & Data Innovation**: The company’s current emphasis is on making “enterprise AI easy, efficient, and trusted” and integrating AI capabilities into the Data Cloud.
- **Global Expansion**: Active hiring across 30 locations indicates continued geographic growth.
- **Customer‑Centric Development**: Focus on empowering enterprises to achieve “full potential through data and AI.”

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Described as “driven by innovation, low egos, high bars, and collaboration” (Snowflake Careers page). Glassdoor rating of 3.9/5 overall (78% approve CEO).
- **Work‑Life Balance**: Glassdoor rates Work/Life Balance at 3.7/5; many remote and hybrid roles available (see Indeed listings).
- **Benefits**: “Benefits & Beyond” program includes competitive compensation, equity, career advancement programs, and commitment to pay equality and veteran hiring.
- **Engineering Focus**: Hiring process includes 2–4 week timeline with technical interviews; the company values impactful, project‑based work for all roles, including interns.
- **Recognition**: Named a Best Large Place to Work (BuiltIn 2024) and future‑focused by Fortune, signaling strong employer brand.

## Sources
1. [Snowflake Careers Overview](https://careers.snowflake.com/us/en)
2. [Life at Snowflake](https://careers.snowflake.com/us/en/snowflake-life)
3. [Snowflake on Glassdoor](https://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-Snowflake-EI_IE928471.11,20.htm)
4. [Snowflake Hiring Process](https://careers.snowflake.com/us/en/gethired)
5. [Snowflake on Indeed](https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Snowflake-7f4a7fba)
6. [Snowflake Careers Portal (Ashby)](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/snowflake) – provided by user

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