# Data Architecture Lead

**Company:** [Snowflake](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/snowflake)
**Location:** Menlo Park, CA
**Role:** Data Engineering
**Salary:** $248k – $326k/yr
**Experience:** 8+ years
**Skills:** Snowflake, dbt, RBAC, Airflow, LLMs, Cortex, Dynamic Tables, Streams, Tasks, Python, CI/CD
**Posted:** 2026-04-02

> Senior individual contributor leading data architecture for Snowflake's internal data platform. Defines standards in dbt modeling, RBAC, and AI tooling; partners with product teams and represents capabilities externally. Requires 8+ years experience with deep Snowflake and dbt expertise.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Define and deploy architectural standards across analytics and data engineering teams, covering data modeling patterns in dbt, RBAC frameworks, deployment workflows, and code quality standards.
- Build and deploy AI-powered tooling and skills — including agent frameworks, prompt-driven workflows, and LLM-enabled automation — for use across analytics and data engineering teams.
- Elevate the RBAC framework for the data platform, including designing and implementing row access policies, column masking policies, and role-based access control patterns at scale in Snowflake.
- Partner with Snowflake's product and engineering teams on feature testing and feedback — write meaningful product specifications, develop proof-of-concepts, and help push the Snowflake platform forward.
- Represent Snowflake's internal data capabilities externally, meeting with customers to demonstrate what is possible on the platform and sharing real-world architectural patterns and learnings.
- Act as a strategic lever across teams — bridging data engineering and analytics engineering to drive alignment, reduce redundancy, and raise the technical bar organization-wide.
- Enable the team through documentation, knowledge sharing, and mentorship — setting standards that scale beyond your own direct contributions.

## Requirements
**Required**
- 8+ years of experience in data engineering, analytics engineering, or data architecture roles.
- Deep expertise in Snowflake, including advanced data modeling, RBAC design, performance optimization, and the broader Snowflake feature set (Cortex, Dynamic Tables, Streams, Tasks, etc.).
- Expert-level dbt skills (dbt Core and/or dbt Platform), including macro development, testing frameworks, CI/CD integration, and large-scale project management.
- Hands-on experience with Airflow or similar orchestration platforms for data pipeline management.
- Strong proficiency with AI development tools, including experience with LLM-powered workflows, agent frameworks (e.g., Cortex Agents, Claude Code, Cortex Code), and prompt engineering for data use cases.
- Experience designing and implementing RBAC frameworks at scale — including row access policies, masking policies, and role hierarchies in Snowflake or similar platforms.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with a track record of writing clear technical specs, architecture documents, and stakeholder-facing materials.
- Ability to operate with principal-level scope: driving cross-functional initiatives, influencing without authority, and delivering outcomes across multiple teams.

**Preferred**
- Experience working at a technology company with a large-scale internal data platform.
- Prior experience building or contributing to internal developer tooling, shared libraries, or platform-as-a-product initiatives.
- Familiarity with Python for data pipeline development, scripting, and automation.
- Experience presenting technical content to external audiences (customers, conferences, etc.).

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