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# Principal Software Engineer 2 - OLTP

- **Company:** Snowflake Inc.
- **Location:** Menlo Park, CA, United States
- **Salary:** $304,000.0
- **Contract:** Permanent contract
- **Skills:** Artificial Intelligence, Systems Engineering, C++ (Programming Language), Cloud Computing, Databases, Concurrency Controls, Distributed Data Store, Distributed Systems, PostgreSQL, Online Transaction Processing, System Programming, Enterprise Data Management, System Availability, Snowflake, Multi-Agent Systems, Caching, Indexer, Storage Technologies, Low Latency
- **Published:** October 7, 2026
- **Apply:** https://diversityjobs.com/career/18561205/Principal-Software-Engineer-2-Oltp-California-Menlo-Park

## About the Role

* 15+ years of experience building databases, distributed systems, storage systems or large-scale cloud infrastructure, with sustained impact at significant technical scope.
 * Deep expertise in OLTP and database systems, including areas such as transactions, concurrency control, storage engines, indexing, query processing, replication, recovery and high availability.
 * Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure for low-latency stateful systems, including compute, storage, networking, resource isolation and failure handling.
 * Experience designing highly elastic, multi-tenant, or rapidly provisioned stateful systems where isolation and efficient lifecycle management are first-class concerns.
 * Strong instincts for how database architecture should evolve for AI-native applications and autonomous agents, including ephemeral state, sandboxing, safe transactional actions and programmatic database lifecycle.
 * Experience making difficult architectural tradeoffs across latency, throughput, consistency, availability, durability, scalability, isolation and cost.
 * A track record of taking technically ambitious systems from architecture through production at meaningful scale.
 * Experience influencing technical direction across multiple teams or a broad product area.
 * Strong systems engineering instincts and the ability to work across abstractions, from database internals to distributed infrastructure.
 * Deep PostgreSQL expertise is a strong advantage, but experience building other sophisticated transactional or distributed database systems is equally relevant.
 * Strong systems programming experience; C, C++, or Rust experience is a plus.
 * Exceptional technical judgment and communication skills, including the ability to influence engineers, executives and customers.

## Description

We're looking for a Principal Engineer 2 to help define and drive the architecture across database internals, storage, compute and cloud infrastructure. A core part of the role is designing transactional systems for agent-driven workloads, where isolated state, rapid database lifecycle, safe autonomous operations, and deep integration with enterprise data are first-class requirements.
What You'll Do

 * Define and drive the long-term technical architecture for OLTP across Snowflake Postgres, Unistore and the infrastructure they depend on.
 * Lead major architectural decisions across transactions, storage, concurrency control, replication, recovery, query execution and database scalability.
 * Shape the compute and storage architecture for low-latency, highly available transactional systems, including resource isolation, elasticity, networking, caching and container infrastructure.
 * Build database primitives for agent-driven workloads, including fast creation of isolated transactional environments, checkpointing and rollback, and efficient lifecycle management.
 * Define how agents safely read and modify operational state, with strong guarantees around consistency, recovery, access control and governance.
 * Determine where PostgreSQL architecture and compatibility provide leverage and where alternative approaches can deliver meaningful advantages.
 * Design for workloads where databases and transactional environments are created and operated programmatically at machine speed rather than primarily through human administration.
 * Lead complex, cross-organizational engineering efforts and establish technical direction across multiple teams.
 * Work closely with product leaders, senior engineering leadership, and strategic customers on the most important technical and product decisions.
 * Raise the technical bar through architecture reviews, mentoring and hands-on leadership on the hardest systems problems.