Senior Applied AI Engineer

Snowflake Snowflake · Data AI · CA-Menlo Park, United States · Engineering

Senior Applied AI Engineer at Snowflake, focused on leading customer AI programs, defining and owning AI quality through evaluation frameworks, mentoring engineers, and productionizing agentic AI solutions. This role involves hands-on contribution to ML pipelines and agentic AI, acting as a senior technical advisor to customers and collaborating with product/engineering teams to shape the AI platform. Requires experience with LLMs, RAG, agentic workflows, and evaluation methodologies, with a significant customer-facing component.

What you'd actually do

  1. Lead Customer Programs: Own the full lifecycle of complex, multi-engineer AI engagements – from scoping and architecture through deployment, monitoring, and handoff. Be accountable for delivery quality and customer outcomes for the projects you lead.
  2. Own AI Quality: Define what "good" means for each engagement. Translate ambiguous customer goals into measurable quality metrics, evaluation frameworks, and golden datasets – then run systematic eval loops to hill-climb on agent quality, catch regressions before customers do, and continuously raise the bar on accuracy, faithfulness, and safety. Set the standard for how the team measures and improves AI systems in production.
  3. Grow and Mentor Engineers: Provide day-to-day technical leadership and mentorship to a team of 2–6 Applied AI Engineers. Review designs and code, unblock teammates, and actively develop their skills and careers.
  4. Deliver with Velocity: Remain a hands-on contributor – designing, iterating, and shipping high-quality ML pipelines and agentic AI solutions alongside your team. Translate ambiguous business objectives into robust, scalable, and performant solutions.
  5. Productionize AI at Scale: Own the full implementation lifecycle for AI solutions, from prototype through deployment, monitoring, and optimization in secure, large-scale production environments. Build the safety guardrails, observability, and human-review workflows that keep AI applications reliable and trustworthy – and close the loop from production traces and user feedback back into your evals so quality compounds over time.

Skills

Required

  • Demonstrated experience leading technical projects or teams, including setting technical direction, reviewing others' work, and driving delivery to completion.
  • Proven experience building and productionizing applications using LLMs, especially with technologies like RAG and agentic workflows.
  • Hands-on experience defining quality metrics and evaluation frameworks for LLM or agent systems, and using evals to systematically improve quality over time.
  • Excellent problem-solving and communication skills, with an ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and executive stakeholders.
  • Comfort with ambiguity and the ability to independently structure and execute on complex, open-ended problems.
  • 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
  • Experience in a customer-facing technical role.
  • Willingness to travel.

Nice to have

  • Experience building eval sets from production traces and synthetic data, and running structured experimentation (A/B tests, ablations, offline evals) to compare prompts, models, or agent architectures.
  • Familiarity with eval and observability tooling (e.g., Braintrust, LangSmith, Arize, Weave, Promptfoo) or experience building custom eval harnesses.
  • Experience with failure-mode analysis on agent or RAG systems – categorizing errors (hallucination, retrieval miss, planning failure, tool misuse) and driving each down with targeted evals.
  • Hands-on experience with the MLOps lifecycle, including model deployment, monitoring, and evaluation in a cloud environment (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
  • Familiarity with core data science libraries and tools (e.g., pandas, numpy, Snowpark).
  • Startup experience or experience in a high-growth, fast-paced environment.

What the JD emphasized

  • Own the full lifecycle of complex, multi-engineer AI engagements
  • Define what "good" means for each engagement
  • Translate ambiguous customer goals into measurable quality metrics, evaluation frameworks, and golden datasets
  • run systematic eval loops to hill-climb on agent quality
  • catch regressions before customers do
  • continuously raise the bar on accuracy, faithfulness, and safety
  • Set the standard for how the team measures and improves AI systems in production
  • Provide day-to-day technical leadership and mentorship
  • designing, iterating, and shipping high-quality ML pipelines and agentic AI solutions
  • Translate ambiguous business objectives into robust, scalable, and performant solutions
  • Own the full implementation lifecycle for AI solutions
  • deployment, monitoring, and optimization in secure, large-scale production environments
  • Build the safety guardrails, observability, and human-review workflows
  • close the loop from production traces and user feedback back into your evals
  • quality compounds over time
  • Serve as a senior technical advisor to customer data science and engineering leadership
  • Set the standard for how Snowflake AI is deployed
  • articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and executive stakeholders
  • Work cross-functionally with Snowflake's Product and Engineering teams
  • bringing real-world patterns and feedback from the field to directly shape the future of Snowflake's AI platform
  • Identify recurring deployment patterns and turn them into reusable assets
  • reference architectures, evaluation harnesses, and product feedback that scale Snowflake's impact across customers
  • Demonstrated experience leading technical projects or teams
  • setting technical direction
  • reviewing others' work
  • driving delivery to completion
  • Proven experience building and productionizing applications using LLMs
  • especially with technologies like RAG and agentic workflows
  • Hands-on experience defining quality metrics and evaluation frameworks for LLM or agent systems
  • using evals to systematically improve quality over time
  • Excellent problem-solving and communication skills
  • ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and executive stakeholders
  • Comfort with ambiguity
  • ability to independently structure and execute on complex, open-ended problems
  • 5+ years of professional software engineering experience
  • Experience in a customer-facing technical role
  • Willingness to travel
  • Experience building eval sets from production traces and synthetic data
  • running structured experimentation (A/B tests, ablations, offline evals) to compare prompts, models, or agent architectures
  • Familiarity with eval and observability tooling (e.g., Braintrust, LangSmith, Arize, Weave, Promptfoo)
  • experience building custom eval harnesses
  • Experience with failure-mode analysis on agent or RAG systems
  • categorizing errors (hallucination, retrieval miss, planning failure, tool misuse)
  • driving each down with targeted evals
  • Hands-on experience with the MLOps lifecycle
  • model deployment, monitoring, and evaluation in a cloud environment (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
  • Familiarity with core data science libraries and tools (e.g., pandas, numpy, Snowpark)
  • Startup experience or experience in a high-growth, fast-paced environment

Other signals

  • customer-facing technical leader
  • end-to-end delivery of enterprise AI programs
  • hands-on technical leader
  • deeply technical
  • set the technical direction
  • mentor your team
  • senior technical voice
  • intersection of product, engineering, and customer success
  • own the full lifecycle of complex, multi-engineer AI engagements
  • scoping and architecture through deployment, monitoring, and handoff
  • accountable for delivery quality and customer outcomes
  • define what "good" means for each engagement
  • translate ambiguous customer goals into measurable quality metrics, evaluation frameworks, and golden datasets
  • run systematic eval loops to hill-climb on agent quality, catch regressions before customers do, and continuously raise the bar on accuracy, faithfulness, and safety
  • set the standard for how the team measures and improves AI systems in production
  • provide day-to-day technical leadership and mentorship
  • review designs and code
  • unblock teammates
  • actively develop their skills and careers
  • remain a hands-on contributor
  • designing, iterating, and shipping high-quality ML pipelines and agentic AI solutions
  • translate ambiguous business objectives into robust, scalable, and performant solutions
  • own the full implementation lifecycle for AI solutions, from prototype through deployment, monitoring, and optimization in secure, large-scale production environments
  • build the safety guardrails, observability, and human-review workflows that keep AI applications reliable and trustworthy
  • close the loop from production traces and user feedback back into your evals so quality compounds over time
  • serve as a senior technical advisor to customer data science and engineering leadership
  • set the standard for how Snowflake AI is deployed
  • articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and executive stakeholders
  • work cross-functionally with Snowflake's Product and Engineering teams
  • bringing real-world patterns and feedback from the field to directly shape the future of Snowflake's AI platform
  • identify recurring deployment patterns and turn them into reusable assets
  • reference architectures, evaluation harnesses, and product feedback that scale Snowflake's impact across customers
  • spend at least 25% of your time onsite, working closely with Snowflake's most strategic customers
  • demonstrated experience leading technical projects or teams
  • setting technical direction
  • reviewing others' work
  • driving delivery to completion
  • proven experience building and productionizing applications using LLMs
  • especially with technologies like RAG and agentic workflows
  • hands-on experience defining quality metrics and evaluation frameworks for LLM or agent systems
  • using evals to systematically improve quality over time
  • excellent problem-solving and communication skills
  • ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and executive stakeholders
  • comfort with ambiguity
  • ability to independently structure and execute on complex, open-ended problems
  • 5+ years of professional software engineering experience
  • experience in a customer-facing technical role
  • willingness to travel
  • experience building eval sets from production traces and synthetic data
  • running structured experimentation (A/B tests, ablations, offline evals) to compare prompts, models, or agent architectures
  • familiarity with eval and observability tooling (e.g., Braintrust, LangSmith, Arize, Weave, Promptfoo)
  • experience building custom eval harnesses
  • experience with failure-mode analysis on agent or RAG systems
  • categorizing errors (hallucination, retrieval miss, planning failure, tool misuse)
  • driving each down with targeted evals
  • hands-on experience with the MLOps lifecycle
  • model deployment, monitoring, and evaluation in a cloud environment (AWS, Azure, or GCP)
  • familiarity with core data science libraries and tools (e.g., pandas, numpy, Snowpark)
  • startup experience or experience in a high-growth, fast-paced environment