Senior Snowflake Platform Engineer

Job description

A leading organization is seeking a senior Snowflake platform engineer to own and evolve its enterprise cloud data platform. This role focuses on designing scalable data infrastructure, ensuring secure and governed data access, and enabling advanced analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities.

The position combines hands-on engineering with platform ownership, requiring close collaboration with data engineering, analytics, and business teams. The role plays a key part in shaping platform reliability, performance, and long-term data strategy.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain a cloud data platform using layered data architecture patterns, ensuring strong data lineage, quality controls, and structured promotion processes
• Optimize compute resources, warehouse configurations, and auto-scaling policies to balance performance and cost efficiency
• Define and evolve the platform roadmap by evaluating new capabilities and aligning them with business needs
• Develop and manage data ingestion and orchestration pipelines using modern tools and frameworks to enable continuous and reliable data flow
• Implement orchestration and automated data movement processes with strong observability and auditability
• Establish and maintain role-based access control frameworks, including data access policies and enterprise-level security controls
• Manage data governance practices, including data classification, lineage tracking, cataloging, and policy enforcement
• Enable advanced analytics and artificial intelligence use cases by supporting natural language querying, intelligent data processing, and machine learning integration
• Monitor platform health through query analysis, usage metrics, and cost reporting, and implement proactive alerting mechanisms
• Lead incident response efforts related to platform performance and data availability and enforce service level objectives
• Manage platform-level configurations such as network security, connectivity, and encryption controls
• Define engineering standards for development, deployment, and infrastructure provisioning, including version control and automation practices
• Mentor team members and provide technical guidance on complex platform challenges
• Develop and maintain documentation, operational procedures, and architectural decision records

Required experience and skills

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering, information systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• 5 to 7 years of experience in data engineering, platform engineering, or a similar role
• At least 5 years of hands-on experience working with Snowflake in a production environment
• Strong expertise in Snowflake platform configuration, administration, and performance optimization
• Deep understanding of role-based access control, data security policies, and governance frameworks
• Experience building and maintaining data pipelines using tools such as dbt and orchestration frameworks
• Proficiency in SQL and at least one programming language, preferably Python
• Experience implementing data architecture patterns such as layered data models for analytics environments
• Familiarity with cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud and associated storage services
• Experience implementing CI and CD pipelines and using version control systems such as Git in a data platform context
• Knowledge of data ingestion frameworks and orchestration tools for automated pipeline execution

FAQ

1. What are the primary responsibilities of a Senior Snowflake Platform Engineer?
A Senior Snowflake Platform Engineer is responsible for designing, administering, and optimizing enterprise cloud data platforms built on Snowflake. The role focuses on platform architecture, data security, governance, performance optimization, infrastructure automation, and enabling scalable analytics and AI workloads across the organization.

2. How does this role contribute to enterprise data platform strategy?
The engineer helps define the long-term roadmap for the Snowflake platform by evaluating new capabilities, improving platform reliability, optimizing operational efficiency, and aligning technical solutions with business objectives. This ensures the platform remains scalable, secure, and future-ready.

3. What is the role of data architecture in this position?
Data architecture is a core responsibility. The engineer designs layered data models, establishes standards for data ingestion and transformation, maintains data lineage, and supports high-quality datasets that power reporting, business intelligence, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence initiatives.

4. How are security and data governance managed on the Snowflake platform?
The role implements role-based access controls, data classification policies, encryption standards, governance frameworks, and auditing mechanisms. These practices help protect sensitive information, support regulatory compliance, and ensure secure access to enterprise data assets.

5. How does the Senior Snowflake Platform Engineer support analytics and AI initiatives?
The engineer builds and maintains a high-performance data platform that enables analytics teams, data scientists, and AI developers to access trusted data efficiently. The platform supports business intelligence, machine learning, natural language querying, predictive analytics, and other data-driven innovation efforts.

6. What role do automation and orchestration play in this position?
Automation is essential for maintaining reliable and scalable data operations. The engineer develops automated data pipelines, manages orchestration workflows, supports continuous integration and deployment, and implements monitoring and alerting systems to improve operational efficiency.