Software Engineer - Database Search

At Snowflake, we are powering the era of the agentic enterprise. To usher in this new era, we seek AI-native thinkers across every function who are energized by the opportunity to reinvent how they work. You don’t just use tools; you possess an innate curiosity, treating AI as a high-trust collaborator that is core to how you solve problems and accelerate your impact. We look for low-ego individuals who thrive in dynamic and fast-moving environments and move with an experimental mindset - who rapidly test emerging capabilities to discover simpler, more powerful ways to deliver results. At Snowflake, your role isn't just to execute a function, but to help redefine the future of how work gets done.

About Database Search

Within this broader Berlin engineering team, Database Search focuses on workload optimization: building core database-engine capabilities that help customer queries run faster by finding and processing data efficiently. The team works on indexing methods, index selection and maintenance, data pruning and skipping, and query optimization for selective SQL queries and other workloads. This work also contributes to Snowflake Optima, which automatically identifies optimization opportunities in customer workloads and seamlessly integrates them so queries get faster over time with minimal user input.

The role

As a Software Engineer, you’ll take on challenging problems inside the database engine, designing, implementing, and improving components across indexing, query optimization, and execution. You’ll drive work from investigation through tested implementation and collaborate with teammates to deliver robust solutions for demanding customer workloads.

What you’ll do

• Implement, test, and improve database-engine features across indexing, data pruning and skipping, query optimization, and execution.

• Investigate performance and scalability bottlenecks using debugging, instrumentation, and measurement, then drive fixes through validation.

• Write maintainable, reliable code and tests in C++ and/or Java.

• Build and improve components in a highly parallel database engine, reasoning about how changes affect query execution end to end.

• Work with teammates and partner engineering groups to refine designs, deliver changes, and share results.

• Evaluate changes against customer workloads and system behavior, and measure their performance impact.

What you’ll bring

• Experience building software through professional work, internships, research, or substantial personal or open-source projects.

• Proficiency in C++ and/or Java, with an interest in writing efficient, reliable systems software.

• Foundational knowledge of data structures, algorithms, and software design.

• Familiarity with SQL and core database concepts, or a strong interest in developing that knowledge.

• Foundational understanding of concurrency and multithreading.

• A proactive, self-motivated approach to hard problems: you take initiative, pursue issues to root cause, and work through ambiguity while communicating progress and incorporating feedback.

• Professional proficiency in English.

• A degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Helpful experience

• Exposure to database internals, query engines, storage engines, indexing, or query execution.

• Experience analyzing performance in concurrent, multithreaded, or otherwise performance-sensitive systems software.

• Familiarity with SQL workloads or columnar data formats such as ORC or Parquet.

Snowflake is growing fast, and we’re scaling our team to help enable and accelerate our growth. We are looking for people who share our values, challenge ordinary thinking, and push the pace of innovation while building a future for themselves and Snowflake.

How do you want to make your impact?

For jobs located in the United States, please visit the job posting on the Snowflake Careers Site for salary and benefits information: careers.snowflake.com