Principal Software Engineer - PostgreSQL
264k – 380kMenlo Park, CAOnsite10+ YOE
Summary
Leads architecture and development of a cloud-native, fully managed Postgres service at Snowflake, pushing performance and scale boundaries while ensuring reliability and integration with Snowflake's data platform. Requires 10+ years in distributed systems and deep Postgres expertise.
About the role
Responsibilities
- Serve as the technical leader on critical, cross-functional projects.
- Break down problems and build consensus for scalable, tractable solutions.
- Build the roadmap while delivering it, balancing long-term and immediate needs.
- Understand trade-offs in consistency, performance, scaling, and costs.
- Ensure operational readiness for durability, availability, performance, and security.
- Solve business needs at large scale using software engineering and analytical skills.
Requirements
- 10+ years building and operating large-scale distributed systems, databases, or cloud services.
- Appreciation of Postgres; experience as user or administrator with solid database fundamentals.
- Strong systems programming experience (Ruby a strong plus).
- Experience with high-availability, multi-tenant, or highly distributed data systems.
- Comfortable with large, complex codebases and leading cross-team architecture.
- Track record of driving projects from concept to production with impact.
- Excellent communication and influence across engineering and product.
- Passion for improving Postgres for developers.
Skills
PostgreSQLRubyDistributed SystemsCloud ServicesSystems ProgrammingHigh-Availability SystemsMulti-Tenant SystemsDatabases
Similar roles at this salary range
All Backend Engineering jobs →Staff Backend Engineer, Search
Staff-level search engineer responsible for designing, scaling, and optimizing ClickUp's search infrastructure using OpenSearch/ElasticSearch, including real-time indexing, vector search, and relevance tuning.
250k – 300kUnited StatesBackend EngineeringRemoteNLPIndexing
Software Engineer, Cloud Agents
Build and scale orchestration, sandboxing, and storage systems for long-running cloud agents powering Codex, ChatGPT, and the OpenAI API. Requires 9+ years experience leading large-scale backend or infrastructure projects.
293k – 385kSan Francisco, CABackend EngineeringHybridGoRust