Snowflake Data Engineer (Only W2) - Local to Bay Area CA

The engineer will:

• Build and prototype new Snowflake capabilities
• Develop solutions using Python and SQL
• Research emerging data and AI technologies
• Build POCs to determine whether new capabilities should be adopted
• Experiment with AI/agent-based solutions
• Troubleshoot and optimize the existing Snowflake/Azure environment
• Improve platform performance, reliability, automation, and cost efficiency
• Help establish practical approaches for technologies where mature patterns may not yet exist

The ideal person is a builder + experimenter + data engineer, rather than someone focused primarily on traditional ETL development.

Duties/Day to Day Overview

• Approximately 60% innovation / 40% platform support
• Research and evaluate emerging Snowflake, cloud data, and AI capabilities
• Build rapid POCs and prototypes
• Develop hands-on solutions using Python, SQL, Snowflake, and Azure
• Experiment with Snowflake capabilities including potential AI/agent use cases
• Evaluate new technologies and develop recommendations for adoption
• Build within the Snowflake environment
• Investigate query history/plans, warehouse sizing, and performance issues
• Troubleshoot complex data/platform issues
• Participate in root-cause analysis and issue resolution
• Help optimize Snowflake performance and consumption
• Support platform automation and operational improvements
• Contribute to monitoring, observability, and platform reliability
• Collaborate across engineering, architecture, analytics, and infrastructure teams
• Occasionally assist with L2/L3-type production escalations
• Explore emerging architecture patterns including Apache Iceberg/open table formats

• Approximately 7+ years overall IT experience
• 5+ years working with data platforms

Snowflake

• 5+ years working with modern data platforms / strong Snowflake experience
• Hands-on Snowflake engineering and development
• Comfortable building solutions within Snowflake
• Strong enough platform knowledge to troubleshoot issues
• Understanding of warehouse sizing
• Query history / query plan troubleshooting
• Performance and optimization knowledge

Important: Candidate does not need to be a pure Snowflake Administrator. The preference is a builder/engineer with strong platform knowledge.

Azure

• Strong hands-on Azure experience
• Understands how data engineering solutions operate within the Azure ecosystem
• Azure is one of the hiring manager’s top three skills

Python

• Strong hands-on Python development
• Must be able to build solutions, automation, and prototypes with Python
• Not sufficient to only have conceptual Python knowledge
• Python is one of the hiring manager’s top three skills

SQL

• Strong hands-on SQL
• Query development/troubleshooting
• ·Stored-procedure-oriented data work
• Ability to use SQL for diagnostics and platform engineering

Builder / POC Mentality

Candidate must be comfortable:

• Researching unfamiliar technologies
• Prototyping new Snowflake capabilities

Building POCs

• Testing potential solutions against business/technical use cases
• Identifying limitations and trade-offs
• Developing a point of view on whether/how technology should be adopted
• Working through ambiguity without requiring established patterns

AI Exposure / Hands-On Interest

• Some hands-on AI experimentation desired
• Candidate does not need to be an AI/ML expert
• Preference for someone who has built or experimented with AI, rather than simply consumed tools such as ChatGPT/Copilot
• Interest in AI agents and AI-driven automation
• Ability to apply AI concepts within the Snowflake/data platform environment

Platform Troubleshooting

• Ability to troubleshoot Snowflake/data platform issues
• Performance investigation
• Root-cause analysis
• Production issue resolution
• Comfortable providing occasional L2/L3-type support