Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
Forward Deployed Engineering sits at a distinctive intersection in SaaS: part product engineering, part customer delivery. In a platform company centered on cloud data and AI capabilities, this role reflects how modern SaaS adoption often depends on hands-on modernization work, not only licenses. The remit spans building real solutions on top of a core platform while translating customer constraints into implementable architectures.
For a SaaS career, the long-term value is the breadth of exposure across multiple environments and use cases. Work like this tends to sharpen judgment around repeatable patterns versus one-off implementations, and builds fluency in the practical tradeoffs of performance, cost, data modeling, and operational reliability. It also develops the consultative communication needed to move from technical execution to technical leadership within product-led organizations.
This role is best suited to engineers who enjoy ambiguous problem spaces and can balance building with advising. It fits professionals who want customer proximity without leaving engineering, and who are motivated by seeing platform capabilities land in production. Comfort working independently, documenting decisions, and collaborating across stakeholders will translate well in this kind of SaaS-facing engineering track.
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
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.
As a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), you will be embedded with customers to lead the modernization of their data and application ecosystem using the Snowflake AI Data Cloud. You will partner closely with clients to understand their business challenges and design, build, and implement cutting-edge data solutions on Snowflake. Your role is crucial in enabling customers to harness the full potential of their data, driving insights, and powering AI initiatives. You'll act as a trusted technical advisor, ensuring customers achieve significant business value and success with Snowflake.
WHAT YOU WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR:
Software Development: Design, build, and deploy robust software systems, tooling, and automation required to support customer solutions on Snowflake. Create comprehensive documentation for developed solutions, technical configurations, and best practices.
Data Engineering & Platform Implementation: Design and implement scalable data pipelines and modern data architectures on Snowflake. Ensure data quality, integrity, and efficient processing within the customer's modern data environment.
Performance Optimization & Best Practices: Analyze and optimize data models, queries, and data processing workflows to maximize performance, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness within the Snowflake environment. Champion Snowflake best practices.
Modern Data Solutions: Evaluate, recommend, and implement modern data integration tools and techniques suitable for the Snowflake ecosystem, helping customers evolve their data capabilities.
Client Collaboration and Enablement: Provide expert technical guidance, mentorship, and training to client teams on leveraging the Snowflake platform effectively, including data management, analytics, AI/ML capabilities, and reporting/BI integration.
Troubleshooting and Support: Identify and resolve technical challenges, performance bottlenecks, and operational issues.
REQUIREMENTS:
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field.
Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and communication skills.
Proficiency in programming and scripting languages such as Python, Go, Java or C++.
Experience with developing AI/ML applications.
Strong understanding of data modeling, data warehousing & data lake concepts, and cloud data platforms.
Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a client-facing environment.
To accelerate successful outcomes and foster trust, the role may involve travel up to 20% of the time to collaborate with teams and stakeholders.
DESIRABLE:
Strong proficiency in SQL and experience working with relational databases and data integration technologies.
Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
Experience implementing solutions on the Snowflake Data Cloud.
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
