Forward Deployed Analytics Engineer & AI Specialist

Snowflake Snowflake · Data AI · CA-Menlo Park, United States · Data Analytics and AI

This role focuses on building the data foundations for Snowflake's AI platform, specifically the layers that make AI reliable: clean, well-modeled data, governed pipelines, and semantic models. The engineer will architect data models, build pipelines, and construct semantic layers to expose business meaning for natural language interfaces and AI agents. They will also identify and resolve data gaps that could cause agents to fail and create reusable artifacts like playbooks and templates. A key requirement is daily use of AI coding assistants and proficiency in semantic modeling for AI agents.

What you'd actually do

  1. Architect flexible, performant data models that drive customers toward single sources of truth across their key business domains
  2. Build semantic data models that expose customer tables to natural language queries via Cortex Analyst, turning complex schemas into something a business stakeholder can ask a question of
  3. Define and validate the metrics, dimensions, and relationships that AI agents need to reason correctly over customer data
  4. Build the artifacts customers leave with: documented playbooks, reusable data model templates, and semantic model libraries their teams can maintain and extend
  5. Run technical workshops to upskill customer data and analytics teams on Snowflake's AI development environment

Skills

Required

  • Advanced SQL: CTEs, window functions, incremental pipeline patterns. You can write complex queries without referencing documentation.
  • Analytics engineering and data modeling: Experience building data infrastructure involving large-scale relational datasets; strong instincts for pipeline design, QA, and testing across the full stack from ingestion through semantic layer.
  • Python: Modern, type-hinted, readable. You understand Python-based data pipelines and automation workflows.
  • AI-assisted development: You have used an LLM coding assistant (CoCo, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Claude, or equivalent) as your primary development environment. Daily usage is the baseline.
  • Semantic modeling: You can write a semantic view configuration or structured skill file that handles edge cases and encodes enough domain knowledge that the model behaves like a subject matter expert.
  • Client-facing communication: You write code, but your output needs to make sense to a business leader who has never opened a terminal. You are the translation layer between what Snowflake's AI can do and what the customer actually needs.
  • Owns the outcome: Tracks adoption after go-live, identifies stall points, and re-engages until the customer's data is reliable and their team can maintain it independently.
  • Codifies, doesn't customize: Instinct is to turn patterns into reusable templates and playbooks that the next engineer can deploy at the next customer, not to build bespoke every time.
  • Comfortable with ambiguity: Engages with customers to derive requirements, prototypes fast, gathers feedback, and iterates.
  • Signal clarity: Distills messy customer deployments into clean, actionable feedback for Snowflake's product and research teams, explaining root causes and suggesting fixes, not just reporting problems.
  • 5+ years of experience in analytics engineering, data engineering, or a related technical role, with at least a portion of it customer-facing or cross-functional
  • Proficient in SQL; can write window functions and complex joins without referencing documentation
  • Comfortable in Git (PRs, branches, code review)

Nice to have

  • dbt: Experience building and maintaining dbt projects with testing, documentation, and CI/CD pipelines.
  • Snowflake Cortex: Cortex Analyst, Cortex Agents, Cortex Search, semantic views, Dynamic Tables.
  • Experience with Airflow or other orchestration frameworks.
  • Familiarity with enterprise business systems (ERP, CRM, HRIS, or similar).

What the JD emphasized

  • Daily usage is the baseline
  • Has shipped at least one production data model or pipeline that non-technical business users actually relied on

Other signals

  • AI-native thinkers
  • AI as a high-trust collaborator
  • reinvent how they work
  • agent-ready data
  • semantic layer that sits between raw data and AI agents
  • expose customer tables to natural language queries via Cortex Analyst
  • Define and validate the metrics, dimensions, and relationships that AI agents need to reason correctly
  • Identify and resolve gaps in data structure, naming, and coverage that would cause an agent to fail or produce incorrect results
  • Author semantic view configurations and skill files (YAML + Markdown) that a non-technical analyst can invoke in plain English
  • AI-assisted development: You have used an LLM coding assistant (CoCo, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Claude, or equivalent) as your primary development environment. Daily usage is the baseline.
  • Semantic modeling: You can write a semantic view configuration or structured skill file that handles edge cases and encodes enough domain knowledge that the model behaves like a subject matter expert.