Senior Software Engineer - Cortex AI - FDE
Builds backend infrastructure for Snowflake’s agentic AI products, including agent runtimes, retrieval systems, evaluation pipelines, and multi-tenant services. Requires 7+ years of distributed systems or AI/ML infrastructure experience, strong Go or Java and Python skills, and expertise in cloud-native systems.
About the job
Responsibilities
- Architect and scale agentic runtimes that execute complex workflows, with low-latency tool execution and robust state management.
- Design high-performance context engineering infrastructure for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), including vector database integration, search indexing, query processing, result ranking, semantic caching, and automated metadata extraction.
- Develop an evaluation engine for large-scale golden-set simulations, error-analysis pipelines, and hill-climbing experiments.
- Productionize AI workflows by turning LLM capabilities into hardened, multi-tenant microservices with guardrails and observability.
- Direct infrastructure strategy for model routing, prompt caching, and token optimization.
- Explain complex failures to external audiences and produce both internal analyses and customer-safe communications.
- Determine whether customer problems are bespoke issues or platform gaps that warrant broader solutions.
- Debug across service layers using logs and telemetry to identify root causes in unfamiliar codebases.
- Define quality metrics and use evaluation frameworks to improve LLM and agent system quality over time.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field.
- 7+ years of experience building distributed systems, high-throughput APIs, or backend infrastructure for AI/ML products.
- Deep proficiency in Go or Java and Python.
- Strong understanding of database internals, distributed state management, and cloud-native architecture.
- Familiarity with vector indices, agent platforms, and scalable data pipelines.
- Experience in a customer-facing technical role.
- Comfort with ambiguity and open-ended, externally driven problems.
Nice-to-haves
- Query optimization and SQL engine internals.
- Multi-tenant systems handling sensitive enterprise data at scale.
- Search infrastructure for large-scale applications.
- Direct experience with agent runtime, context retrieval, evaluation, or AI workflow infrastructure.
Compensation and Benefits
- Salary and benefits information is available on the Snowflake Careers Site.
Skills
Go, Java, Python, Distributed Systems, High-Throughput Apis, Kubernetes, Foundationdb, Vector Databases, RAG, Search Indexing, SQL, Microservices, Llm Evaluation, Prompt Caching, Cloud-Native Architecture
Similar jobs
Backend Engineering jobs
Machinify
United States
Senior backend engineer responsible for architecting and shipping scalable, reliable web applications and distributed systems for a healthcare audit product. The role requires 8+ years of backend experience, strong Java or Scala expertise, cloud-scale systems experience, and the ability to mentor engineers and adopt AI-assisted development practices.
Snowflake
Bellevue, WA
Design and build scalable systems that monitor, govern, and optimize cloud spending across Snowflake. The role requires 7+ years of production systems experience, strong programming and architectural skills, and expertise in cloud efficiency or observability.
Snowflake
Menlo Park, CA
Senior software engineer responsible for architecting and scaling Snowflake’s multi-cloud managed database infrastructure, including distributed systems, automation, reliability, and security. Requires 7+ years of backend systems experience and strong proficiency in cloud platforms and infrastructure automation.
Snowflake
Build and operate Snowflake’s multi-cloud capacity platform for CPU and GPU procurement, allocation, forecasting, and utilization. The role requires 7+ years of large-scale production systems experience, cloud fleet provisioning expertise, and strong programming and troubleshooting skills.
Snowflake
Menlo Park, CA
Build scalable backend systems and user-facing workflow features for Observe by Snowflake’s observability platform. The role requires senior-level software engineering experience, strong distributed-systems foundations, and proficiency in Go or another high-performance systems language.