# Senior Software Engineer - Cortex AI - FDE

**Company:** [Snowflake](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/snowflake)
**Location:** Unspecified
**Role:** Backend Engineering
**Salary:** $200k – $270k/yr
**Experience:** 7+ years
**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
**Posted:** 2026-08-11

> 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.

## Job Description

## 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.

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