Senior Software Engineer — Ingestion for Spark

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. Build the future of the AI Data Cloud Snowflake's File Ingestion team owns the engines behind COPY INTO and Snowpipe — the paths that land customer data into the AI Data Cloud at hundreds of petabytes per quarter, growing year over year. We build the batch and continuous file-ingest paths that customers depend on to move data into the platform at scale. We run at high ingest throughput with customer data landing in minutes end-to-end. We're hiring a Senior Software Engineer to own deep, high-impact work across our file-ingest engines. You will operate at the intersection of systems performance, query execution, and customer-driven feature delivery — shaping the architecture of how data enters the platform. What you'll do - Design and deliver major end-to-end features in the ingestion control-plane services. - Drive multi-quarter technical initiatives across the ingest surface like Snowpark Connect.. - Partner with architects, PMs, and adjacent teams to shape designs that scale across cloud providers and large enterprise footprints. - Write and review design docs, set technical direction on cross-team work, and own the bar for code quality and operational excellence in your area.. - Mentor mid-level and junior engineers; raise the team's overall design and review quality. - Engage directly with enterprise customers to root-cause production issues, prototype fixes, and turn customer feedback into roadmap signal. What we're looking for - 7+ years building production systems software, with a track record of owning high-impact projects from design through GA. - Expert proficiency in C++ or Java — strong preference for engineers comfortable in both. - Deep understanding of at least one of: query execution engines, ingestion pipelines, distributed data systems. - Demonstrated cross-team design leadership and architectural judgment — able to navigate trade-offs across performance, correctness, and time-to-market. - Strong written communication; comfortable driving consensus across PMs, architects, and adjacent engineering teams. - BS or MS in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. Bonus points for - Optimizing query engines or ingestion systems at PB-scale. - Performance engineering: SIMD, vectorization, cache-aware algorithms, memory management. - Background in cloud-native data warehouses or lakehouse platforms. - Familiarity with Apache Spark and open-table formats such as Apache Iceberg. - Open-source contributions to data systems. - Compiler, transactional database, or storage-engine background. Why this team - Highest-leverage surface in Snowflake's data path. Every feature we ship moves the volume needle for tens of thousands of enterprise accounts. - Cross-cutting technical scope. Our surface touches scanners, parsers, file formats, schedulers, query planning, and storage — broad systems and product work. - Direct customer signal. You'll work with enterprise accounts where your fixes unblock real revenue. - Senior bar. This role expects you to set technical direction, partnering with the team's tech lead and architect to shape our roadmap. 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 t