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Snowflake is seeking a Director of Engineering to build and scale the Frontier Engineering practice—a forward-deployed engineering organization that embeds senior engineers and engineering leaders with strategic customers to build on the AI Data Cloud and deliver production outcomes.
In this role, you will lead a sizeable, multi-country engineering organization and set the technical and operating vision for how Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) teams scope, build, and ship on Snowflake capabilities including Snowpark, Cortex AI, and Snowflake Horizon. You will operate with executive presence in front of customers while remaining hands-on enough to raise the engineering bar across the organization.
Key responsibilities include:
- Leading a multi-country engineering organization and managing managers
- Setting technical vision and operating principles for FDE teams
- Serving as a senior customer-facing leader, partnering directly with customer executives to shape engineering engagements and earn technical credibility
- Attracting and hiring exceptional engineering talent through your network; coaching and developing managers and senior engineers to build a high-performing, engineering-first culture across multiple countries and time zones
- Partnering with Sales, Product, and the global Frontier Engineering organization to connect customer needs to product direction and real engineering outcomes
- Reshaping and transforming teams, defining structure where none existed, and navigating organizational change and ambiguity
This is a rare opportunity to shape a new engineering-first practice from a position of real ownership, with backing from a global Frontier Engineering organization and the mandate to build something lasting.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 12+ years of software engineering experience with significant time leading engineering teams, including managing managers
- Genuine engineering foundation: have built and shipped production software; can set a high technical bar and oversee delivery
- Proven experience building or scaling Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) style teams, or embedded engineering teams that build directly with and for customers
- Strong customer-facing executive presence with a track record of working directly with customer executives and winning technical credibility
- Experience leading engineering organizations across multiple countries and time zones, ideally across APJ (Asia-Pacific Japan)
- Demonstrated ability to attract senior engineering talent through an established network
- Comfort with ambiguity and organizational change; experience reshaping, consolidating, or transforming teams
- Experience with cloud data platforms, AI/ML, or modern data and application development
BONUS:
- Hands-on familiarity with Snowflake or comparable cloud data and AI platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP, Databricks)
- Experience building with GenAI and agentic application patterns in production
