Software Engineer, Cortex AI Search Infrastructure

Snowflake is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the Cortex AI Search Infrastructure team, focused on building high-performance retrieval engines that power flagship products like CoWork, Cortex Code, and Cortex Agents. The role involves designing scalable systems for RAG, semantic indexing, and vector search, while optimizing performance and cost for enterprise-level data processing.

Responsibilities include architecting agentic runtimes, developing evaluation infrastructure, and product ionizing AI workflows with strict guardrails and observability.

The ideal candidate has 9+ years of experience in distributed systems, high-throughput APIs, or backend infrastructure for AI/ML products, with deep proficiency in Go or Java and Python. Strong systems thinking is required, along with expertise in database internals, cloud-native architecture (Kubernetes, Foundation DB), and AI plumbing such as vector indices and data pipelines. Experience with query optimization, multi-tenant systems, and large-scale search infrastructure is a plus.

The position is based in the U.S., with opportunities for remote work.