Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This Principal Software Engineer role sits at the infrastructure layer of a mature, enterprise-grade SaaS platform where metadata is not a side concern but a core product dependency. Work on scalable metadata services underpins capabilities that matter in modern cloud data offerings, including cross-region replication, data sharing, and marketplace-style distribution, all of which rely on consistent, high-throughput system behavior.
For a SaaS-focused engineering career, the long-term value is in operating at the intersection of distributed systems, database internals, and reliability. The scope described points to ownership of foundational primitives such as transactions, logs, and metadata APIs, plus the performance engineering required when request rates and data volumes expand. Experience here tends to translate across data infrastructure SaaS, from observability to developer platforms, where correctness and latency are product features.
This is best suited to senior engineers who prefer deep systems work over application-layer feature delivery, and who are comfortable making architectural calls that influence roadmaps. It will fit professionals who enjoy diagnosing bottlenecks, designing for fault tolerance, and coordinating across multiple engineering groups to keep core services production-ready.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
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.
About the job
Build the future of the AI Data Cloud. Join the Snowflake team.
Snowflake Metadata team builds a scalable metadata system that allows Snowflake to query across petabyte-scale data efficiently. The team develops distributed and multi-layered caches, transaction frameworks, declarative entity management, time travel and other core Snowflake services. It is also responsible for providing the foundation of global features like cross-region replication, data sharing, and data marketplace.
AS A PRINCIPAL SOFTWARE ENGINEER - METADATA, YOU WILL:
Solve real business needs at large scale by applying your software engineering and analytical problem solving skills.
Create architecture and design, influence our product roadmap, and take ownership and responsibility over new projects.
Design, develop, and support a highly-parallel and fault-tolerant database system including a decentralized caching system of terabytes of metadata with an ever growing request rate.
Design and implement core foundational features including transactions, DDL/DML logs, metadata API as well as advanced features built on top of the metadata, such as declarative entity management and integrations to support developer toolchains.
Analyze and understand performance and scalability bottlenecks in the system and solve them.
Ensure operational readiness of the services and meet the commitments to our customers regarding availability and performance.
OUR IDEAL PRINCIPAL SOFTWARE ENGINEER WILL HAVE:
14+ years industry experience designing, building and supporting large scale systems in production.
Strong computer science fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, and distributed systems.
Sharp original thinking to make the right choices and guide teams
Systems programming skills including multi-threading, concurrency, caching, etc. Fluency in Java or other similar procedural object-oriented language is preferred.
Track record of identifying and implementing creative solutions to complex problems.
Knowledge of database internals is a big plus.
Ability to work effectively across engineering teams in multiple locations
BS in Computer Science; Masters or PhD Preferred.
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?
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
