Principal Forward Deployed Engineer I, Frontier Engineering
SnowflakeMenlo Park, CAposted 1d ago
- PayUSD / yr
- $264k – 380k
- Where
- Menlo Park, CA
- Posted
- Oct 15
- yesterday
- Type
- Full-time
- Setup
- Hybrid
At a glance
Lead high-stakes enterprise AI deployments as Snowflake’s senior technical counterpart to customer executives. Build production systems, define AI quality standards, and set technical direction across the Frontier Engineering organization.
Summarized by AI from the original posting
What you'll do
- Build and deploy production-grade AI systems for strategic customers
- Lead architectural steering, technical reviews, and executive strategy alignment
- Own end-to-end technical execution across complex AI engagements
- Write production code and prototypes
- Set AI quality standards and lead evaluation improvements
- Mentor Senior and Staff engineers
- Travel to customer sites for at least 25% of the time
Requirements
- 01Trusted technical advisor to CTOs and executive engineering leaders
- 02Experience converting field delivery patterns into reusable platforms, tools, frameworks, or open-source libraries
- 03Deep expertise in production AI architectures
- 04Hands-on production coding and code review
- 05Exceptional technical communication across technical and executive audiences
- 06Active contributions to open-source AI frameworks, technical publications, or industry speaking engagements
- 07Familiarity with Cortex AI, Snowpark, or modern enterprise data infrastructure platforms
Skills
Full 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.
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.
We are hiring a Principal Forward Deployed Engineer for our Frontier Engineering team. This team embeds directly with Snowflake's most strategic customers to design, build, and deploy production-grade AI systems . At the Principal level, you are the senior technical counterpart to CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and chief architects at our largest enterprise customers; you set the technical direction that the Frontier Engineering organization follows.
AS A PRINCIPAL FORWARD DEPLOYED ENGINEER YOU WILL:
Be the trusted technical partner to customer engineering leadership: Build durable, peer-level relationships with CTOs, VPs of Engineering, chief architects, and heads of data/AI at Snowflake’s most strategic accounts: lead architectural steering, technical reviews, and executive strategy alignment to help shape their AI roadmaps.
Drive Architecture & Technical Strategy Across High-Stakes Deployments: Own end-to-end technical execution and outcomes across Snowflake’s most complex, high-visibility AI engagements.
Stay hands-on: Write production code and working prototypes on the most critical parts of customer programs, and review designs and code to set the bar for how the team builds.
Own the AI quality bar: Lead how the team measures and improves AI quality, turning ambiguous customer goals into clear, testable evaluation standards.
Provide Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Mentor Senior and Staff engineers, raise engineering standards across the organization, and partner with cross-functional leads to drive complex technical initiatives.
Travel to Customer Sites: Spend at least 25% of your time onsite working with customers.
OUR IDEAL CANDIDATE WILL HAVE:
15+ years of software engineering experience, including at least 3 years building and shipping production AI/ML or agentic systems at enterprise scale.
Proven track record as a trusted technical advisor to CTOs and executive engineering leaders at large enterprises.
Demonstrated success converting client/field delivery patterns into reusable platforms, tools, frameworks, or open-source libraries.
Deep expertise in production AI architectures—including RAG pipelines, multi-step agentic systems, evaluation frameworks, and guardrails.
Hands-on builder who writes and reviews production code and stays close to implementation.
Strong systems mindset with exceptional technical communication skills across both deeply technical and executive audiences.
BONUS POINTS FOR THE FOLLOWING:
Experience shipping features into a commercial data or AI platform, based on customer requirements.
Active contributions to open-source AI frameworks, technical publications, or industry speaking engagements.
Familiarity with Cortex AI, Snowpark, or modern enterprise data infrastructure platforms.
WHY JOIN FRONTIER ENGINEERING AT SNOWFLAKE?
Frontier Engineering is where Snowflake’s AI platform meets reality. You’re not building demos, you’re shipping AI applications that run in some of the world’s most complex enterprise environments. You will work on hard problems with real stakes, alongside engineers who are deeply technical and customer-obsessed.
How do you want to make your impact?
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
Compensation: $264K - $379.5K