Engineering Manager, Release Validation
At a glance
Manager-level Engineering Leadership role at Snowflake. Bellevue · full-time · $236,000–$339,200 base.
techroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Hire and develop engineers responsible for test systems, automation and tools that support other developers
- Shape the multi-quarter validation plan around faster feedback, fewer blockers, improved test quality and reduced cost
- Oversee the reliability and efficiency of regression and workload test systems, pre-production environments and release checks
- Help product engineering groups improve test quality by addressing flaky, non-hermetic, redundant and low-value tests
- Speed up failure diagnosis and triage, using AI analysis and automatic routing to cut manual effort
What you bring
- Three to five years leading engineers through hiring, coaching and development at varied career stages
- Experience operating large-scale CI/CD, test infrastructure or developer productivity platforms, preferably in distributed systems
- Technical depth to review designs and weigh architectural options, plus command of test strategy and release gating
- A bachelor's or master's degree in computer science or a related subject, or equivalent experience
Who this fits
This manager role suits someone who can lead engineers and engage deeply with platform design and test strategy. You’ll coordinate across teams and work with release engineering and engineering leads to improve release quality.
From the employer
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 the Team
Snowflake engineering takes pride in building highly reliable and scalable products.In the era of autonomous AI agents and continuous deployment, a traditional testing model breaks down under massive PR volume. Our AI pilled engineers treat validation as a scalable, developer-first platform. The Release Validation Team builds test frameworks that make continuous deployment safe, cost-efficient, and agent-friendly. Our customers are Snowflake engineers and their army of agents. How do Snowflake engineers keep their agents running autonomous for hours and days, landing quality PRs with human interventions? They rely on layers of validation that agents can execute in high-fidelity production simulation.
We give Snowflake the confidence to ship at speed without compromising Snowflake’s core brand promise: extreme reliability.
In this role, you will:
Lead and grow the team. Hire, mentor, and develop engineers working on test infrastructure, automation, and developer tooling. Build a culture of ownership, technical excellence, and focus on the customer.
Set strategy and roadmap. Define and drive the multi-quarter vision for release validation: faster signals, fewer blockers, better test quality, and lower cost.
Own the validation platform. Be accountable for the reliability, scalability, and efficiency of our distributed regression and workload test frameworks, pre-production environments, and release validation pipeline..
Improve test health across the company. Work with feature teams to reduce flaky, non-hermetic, duplicate, and low-value tests, and set standards and incentives that keep them healthy.
Cut down release blockers. Lead efforts to improve how failures are traced to their cause, filter out noise from infrastructure problems, and speed up triage so real regressions reach the owning team quickly.
Drive AI and automation. Invest in AI-driven failure analysis and automated routing that remove manual work for engineers across Snowflake.
Work across teams. Act as the main partner to Release Engineering and engineering leaders on release quality
What We're Looking For
3-5 years of experience hiring, coaching, and developing engineers at different career stages.
Experience building and running large-scale CI/CD, test infrastructure, or developer productivity platforms, ideally for complex distributed systems.
A strong technical background, with enough depth to review designs, make architecture tradeoffs, and earn the respect of senior engineers.
A solid grasp of test strategy: regression vs. workload testing, hermeticity, flakiness, coverage tradeoffs, and release gating.
Experience driving work across many teams and influencing without authority.
A data-driven leadership style: you set measurable goals and use metrics to prioritize and show impact.
Strong communication skills, including explaining complex technical tradeoffs to both engineers and executives.
BS/MS in Computer Science or related majors, or equivalent experience.
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
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