Principal Software Engineer - Metadata

Architecture

Leipziger Pl. 18, Berlin

Snowflake

Full-time

Permanent

Manager / C-level

Hybrid

Tech stack

English

C1

Java

master

Distributed systems

master

Software Architecture

master

Metadata

master

caching

master

Data Replication

advanced

Job description

Snowflake Metadata team builds a scalable metadata system that allows Snowflake to query across petabyte-scale data efficiently. The team develops distributed and multi-layered caches, transaction frameworks, declarative entity management, time travel and other core Snowflake services. It is also responsible for providing the foundation of global features like cross-region replication, data sharing, and data marketplace.AS A PRINCIPAL SOFTWARE ENGINEER - METADATA, YOU WILL:

• Solve real business needs at large scale by applying your software engineering and analytical problem solving skills.

• Create architecture and design, influence our product roadmap, and take ownership and responsibility over new projects.

• Design, develop, and support a highly-parallel and fault-tolerant database system including a decentralized caching system of terabytes of metadata with an ever growing request rate.

• Design and implement core foundational features including transactions, DDL/DML logs, metadata API as well as advanced features built on top of the metadata, such as declarative entity management and integrations to support developer toolchains.

• Analyze and understand performance and scalability bottlenecks in the system and solve them.

• Ensure operational readiness of the services and meet the commitments to our customers regarding availability and performance.

OUR IDEAL PRINCIPAL SOFTWARE ENGINEER WILL HAVE:

• 14+ years industry experience designing, building and supporting large scale systems in production.

• Strong computer science fundamentals including data structures, algorithms, and distributed systems.

• Sharp original thinking to make the right choices and guide teams

• Systems programming skills including multi-threading, concurrency, caching, etc. Fluency in Java or other similar procedural object-oriented language is preferred.

• Track record of identifying and implementing creative solutions to complex problems.

• Knowledge of database internals is a big plus.

• Ability to work effectively across engineering teams in multiple locations

• BS in Computer Science; Masters or PhD Preferred.

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.

PLEASE NOTE: the team is based in Berlin, Germany and the job requires 3 days per week from the Berlin office.

Published: 24.08.2025

Meet the company

Snowflake

Our founders started from scratch and built a data platform that would harness the immense power of the cloud. They powered the Data Cloud, where organizations have seamless access to explore, share, and unlock the true value of their data.

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