--- title: 'Staff Software Engineer - Metadata at Snowflake' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-metadata-snowflake-bellevue-77kfwqkdmzej' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-11-06' --- # Staff Software Engineer - Metadata at Snowflake - **Company:** [Snowflake](https://feeny.ai/companies/snowflake) - **Location:** Bellevue, WA - **Compensation:** $236k–$339k - **Employment:** full-time - **Posted:** 2026-10-30 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-06 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/snowflake/67057ad9-3f52-4f54-80c6-20a1ea026db4 ## 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. Staff Software Engineer – Metadata Company Pitch Snowflake is the AI Data Cloud. Thousands of organizations run their most critical data, analytics, and AI workloads on our platform. We built Snowflake for the cloud from day one: near-unlimited scale, concurrency, and performance. Our goal is to make every organization's data instantly useful and always available. ## 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](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 ## Other roles at Snowflake - [Senior FP&A Manager - Partnerships & Investments](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-fp-a-manager-partnerships-investments-snowflake-bellevue-6wthq3165gms) — Bellevue, WA - [Principal Software Engineer - Observability](https://feeny.ai/job/principal-software-engineer-observability-snowflake-menlo-park-1haf6vtfhmm3) — Menlo Park, CA - [Senior Solution Engineer, Enterprise Acquisition](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-solution-engineer-enterprise-acquisition-snowflake-sydney-h27kt3kt1v2b) — Sydney, Australia - [Senior Solution Engineer, Enterprise Acquisition](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-solution-engineer-enterprise-acquisition-snowflake-melbourne-h51g62p35jry) — Melbourne, Australia - [Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-snowflake-new-york-h7ttj6zgj7rt) — New York, NY - [Account Executive, Commercial](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-commercial-snowflake-bellevue-r0k07edx7vv5) — Bellevue, WA - [Account Executive, Commercial](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-commercial-snowflake-denver-sd92fn8xayve) — Denver, CO - [Account Executive - Acquisition](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-acquisition-snowflake-germany-m83hj8tqxymr) — Germany - [Partner Sales Director - VAR](https://feeny.ai/job/partner-sales-director-var-snowflake-paris-j06pp22yk3y1) — Paris, France - [Senior Solutions Engineer, Observe](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-solutions-engineer-observe-snowflake-new-york-7rgzk1tnmgsv) — New York, NY