South helps growing companies find, hire, and pay top Latin American talent. Build high-performing teams in 21 days or less.
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A Snowflake Developer builds, maintains, and optimizes data solutions inside the Snowflake platform.
They usually sit between Data Engineering, Analytics Engineering, database development, and business intelligence.
Typical Snowflake Developer responsibilities include:
The exact scope depends on your stack.
A Snowflake Developer on an analytics-heavy team may spend most of their time working with SQL, dbt, dimensional modeling, and BI.
Someone supporting a more engineering-heavy environment may work across Python, Snowpark, Airflow, Kafka, Snowpipe, cloud storage, APIs, and infrastructure as code.
That's why Snowflake Developer is a specialization rather than one perfectly standardized job description.
A dedicated Snowflake Developer becomes particularly valuable when Snowflake moves from a reporting destination to core data infrastructure.
Early on, one Data Engineer or analyst may be able to manage a relatively simple warehouse.
As more teams, pipelines, reports, and applications depend on Snowflake, dedicated platform expertise becomes more valuable.
Snowflake makes scaling compute easy.
That also means inefficient warehouses and queries can become expensive.
A Snowflake Developer can investigate:
and identify where costs can be reduced without compromising performance.
Performance issues may originate from:
A Snowflake Developer can trace those issues through the warehouse rather than treating every slow dashboard as a BI problem.
Rapidly growing warehouses can accumulate:
A Snowflake Developer can help create a cleaner architecture.
Moving from SQL Server, Redshift, BigQuery, Teradata, Oracle, or another warehouse involves more than copying tables.
A migration may require:
Someone with direct Snowflake migration experience can reduce risk.
As dbt projects grow, teams need stronger standards around:
A Snowflake Developer with strong dbt experience can help the transformation layer scale cleanly.
If your company is moving beyond overnight batch loads, you may need expertise with Snowpipe, Snowpipe Streaming, Streams and Tasks, Kafka, or other lower-latency patterns.
Snowpark opens Snowflake to more programmatic workloads.
A developer with Python and Snowpark experience can build transformations and applications without moving all processing outside Snowflake.
Companies adopting Cortex or other Snowflake AI capabilities may benefit from someone who understands both the underlying data environment and the AI services operating on top of it.
A broad Data Engineer may own ingestion, cloud infrastructure, Airflow, Spark, APIs, and other systems.
If Snowflake itself demands enough attention, a specialist can take deeper ownership while broader Data Engineers focus on the rest of the platform.
Strong Snowflake Developers combine advanced SQL, data modeling, Snowflake-specific platform knowledge, and practical experience running production data workloads.
SQL should be one of the first skills you evaluate.
Candidates should be comfortable with:
More senior candidates should understand how their SQL decisions affect Snowflake compute and query performance.
Someone who knows generic SQL isn't automatically a Snowflake Developer.
Look for production experience involving Snowflake-specific concepts such as:
Candidates should know how to design datasets for analytics and downstream use.
Useful experience may include:
For teams using dbt, look for experience with:
Python and Snowpark become particularly useful when workloads extend beyond traditional SQL transformations.
Candidates may use them for:
Snowflake Developers should understand how data reaches the platform and how transformations fit into the broader architecture.
Relevant tools can include:
Ask candidates to explain how they investigate a slow Snowflake workload.
Strong answers may include:
Snowflake performance and Snowflake cost are closely connected.
Candidates should understand how compute decisions affect spend.
More senior developers should be able to identify expensive workloads and explain the tradeoffs involved in reducing them.
Candidates may need experience with:
Snowflake operates within AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud environments.
Candidates don't need to be full Cloud Engineers, but familiarity with cloud storage, networking, IAM, and integrations can be useful.
If your pipelines depend on Airflow, Dagster, Prefect, or another orchestrator, evaluate how the candidate manages dependencies, retries, failures, and backfills.
Snowflake Developers regularly work with:
They should be able to explain technical decisions clearly and understand what downstream users need from the warehouse.
Snowflake Developer compensation depends on seniority, SQL depth, architecture experience, Snowpark knowledge, data-engineering ability, and the complexity of the environment.
South's current Snowflake Developer calculator lists an average U.S. salary of approximately $11,200 per month and an all-in monthly rate of approximately $6,900 for Latin American talent.
That's potential savings of around 38%.
Your actual rate will depend on the profile you need.
Junior Snowflake Developers may support:
They work best when experienced Data Engineers, Analytics Engineers, or Snowflake specialists already provide architectural direction.
Mid-level developers can typically take greater ownership of:
Senior developers may own:
They may also mentor other data professionals and work directly with engineering or data leadership.
For larger or more complex environments, you may need someone operating closer to an architecture role.
A Snowflake Architect may define:
Don't pay for architect-level experience if you mainly need someone maintaining straightforward SQL transformations.
At the same time, don't hire a junior SQL developer for a platform problem that requires architectural judgment.
A Snowflake Developer interview should test Snowflake-specific judgment, not just general SQL.
Strong candidates should be able to discuss production systems they've built, problems they've diagnosed, and tradeoffs they've made around performance, cost, architecture, and maintainability.
Ask:
Walk me through a Snowflake environment you worked on in production.
Then ask:
This quickly reveals how deep their Snowflake experience actually goes.
Give candidates a realistic transformation problem.
For example:
Build a model that calculates monthly recurring revenue from customers, subscriptions, plans, and payments.
Evaluate:
Ask:
A query that previously ran in 30 seconds now takes eight minutes. How would you investigate it?
Strong candidates may examine:
Ask:
Our Snowflake spend increased 50% in one month. What would you audit first?
Look for discussion around:
Ask:
How would you model subscriptions, plans, customers, and payments for analytics?
A strong candidate should discuss grain, relationships, history, facts, dimensions, and how downstream analysts will use the data.
Ask:
How would you design a pipeline for data that needs to reach Snowflake within a few minutes of being generated?
The candidate might discuss Snowpipe, Snowpipe Streaming, Kafka, cloud storage, or another ingestion pattern depending on the requirements.
Ask:
When would you use Streams and Tasks instead of an external orchestrator?
You want to understand whether the candidate knows when Snowflake-native orchestration is sufficient and when a broader workflow engine makes more sense.
Ask:
When would you choose Snowpark instead of SQL or dbt?
Strong candidates should discuss workload complexity, programming-language requirements, existing code, maintainability, and where the processing logically belongs.
Ask:
How would you design Snowflake access for analysts, engineers, finance, and external partners?
Look for practical understanding of roles, privileges, environment separation, and least-privilege access.
Ask:
How would you migrate a large existing warehouse into Snowflake without disrupting reporting?
A senior candidate should think beyond copying data.
They may discuss:
Useful questions include:
Choose questions that match your architecture.
A SQL/dbt-heavy analytics environment doesn't need the same interview as a Snowpark- and streaming-heavy platform.
The roles overlap, but their scope is different.
A Data Engineer generally works across the broader data platform:
A Snowflake Developer specializes more deeply in Snowflake itself:
Hire a Data Engineer when your challenge spans the entire data architecture.
Hire a Snowflake Developer when Snowflake itself is the center of the problem you need someone to solve.
A SQL Developer may work across many relational databases and SQL-based systems.
A Snowflake Developer combines advanced SQL with platform-specific expertise around:
If your needs are primarily database queries and stored SQL across multiple platforms, an SQL Developer may be enough.
If Snowflake architecture and optimization matter, hire the specialist.
The distinction can be subtle.
An Analytics Engineer generally focuses more heavily on:
A Snowflake Developer may take deeper ownership of the underlying platform:
A mature Snowflake environment may eventually need both.
South helps U.S. companies find Snowflake Developers in Latin America based on the actual platform problems the person will own.
Start with your environment rather than a generic job description.
Consider:
A Snowflake Developer supporting a dashboard-heavy analytics team may require a different background from someone leading a large migration or building Snowpark applications.
South searches across Latin America for candidates whose backgrounds match your technical and professional requirements.
For Snowflake Developer roles, evaluation can focus on:
You receive a focused selection of candidates instead of sorting through large numbers of generic data applications.
Compare:
Your data or engineering team interviews the candidates you want to meet.
Use practical Snowflake scenarios, SQL exercises, performance discussions, data-modeling problems, and architecture questions to evaluate how each person would work in your environment.
You make the final hiring decision and manage the Snowflake Developer as part of your team.
South provides one consolidated monthly invoice covering your teammate's compensation and South's service.
There are no minimum commitments, and South offers a free replacement if you need to make a change.
Snowflake work is technical, but it also requires frequent collaboration.
Developers regularly work with:
Latin America's overlap with U.S. business hours supports:
Companies can access experienced Snowflake professionals across Latin America while keeping their data teams working within closely aligned schedules.
A Snowflake Developer builds, maintains, and optimizes solutions inside Snowflake.
Their work can include SQL, data modeling, dbt, Snowpark, Snowpipe, warehouse configuration, performance tuning, pipelines, security, and cost optimization.
Compensation varies by experience and technical depth.
South's current primary calculator lists an all-in monthly rate of approximately $6,900 for Snowflake talent in Latin America compared with an average U.S. salary of approximately $11,200 per month.
Prioritize advanced SQL, hands-on Snowflake experience, data modeling, warehouse architecture, performance tuning, ELT/ETL, and experience with the technologies your environment uses.
dbt, Python, Snowpark, Airflow, streaming, and cloud skills may also be important depending on the role.
Not every position requires Python.
SQL-heavy analytics environments may rely primarily on Snowflake SQL and dbt.
Python becomes more important when the role involves Snowpark, advanced data engineering, automation, ML, or application development.
Only if your organization uses dbt or plans to adopt it.
For many modern analytics teams, Snowflake and dbt are closely connected, so production dbt experience can be extremely valuable.
A Data Engineer typically works across broader data infrastructure.
A Snowflake Developer specializes more deeply in Snowflake's SQL, data models, performance, compute, security, and platform-specific capabilities.
Consider hiring one when Snowflake has become central to your analytics or data platform, costs are rising, queries are slowing, models are becoming difficult to maintain, you're planning a migration, or your broader Data Engineering team needs deeper Snowflake expertise.
Yes. Latin America has Snowflake professionals with experience across SQL, dbt, Python, Airflow, AWS, Azure, GCP, analytics engineering, Data Engineering, and cloud-data platforms, with working hours that can align closely with U.S. teams.
The right Snowflake Developer helps your company move from simply having Snowflake to operating it as a reliable, maintainable, and cost-efficient data platform.
South helps U.S. companies find pre-vetted Snowflake Developers across Latin America based on Snowflake depth, SQL ability, architecture experience, surrounding data-stack knowledge, seniority, and communication.
Schedule a free call and find your next Snowflake Developer in Latin America with South.
The region has the perfect mix of everything you want in remote employees: English skills, shared time zones, hard-working, and depth of talent. They are already accustomed to working remotely for top US startups and Fortune 500 companies.
Absolutely! The US and Latin America have basically the same time zones. No Latin American city is more than two hours ahead of EST.
Every hire is sourced based on your exact needs. They will arrive ready to support your business right away. They can do basically any tasks done remotely, but we recommend starting them as support so your team has more bandwidth for high-value strategic tasks.
All types of roles - customer service, executive assistant, sales, accounting, email marketing, lead generation, content writers, operations, social media marketing, and more!
You can pay directly through us (most popular) or we can connect you with one of our payroll partners.
You don't have to deal with any American labor laws / taxes when hiring full-time remote contractors. They aren't US-based, so no visas or sponsorships to deal with either.
Pricing is one flat monthly rate per hire. The rate includes your teammate's compensation and South's service in a single consolidated invoice. It covers sourcing, vetting, payroll, compliance, ongoing support, and a free replacement if you ever need one. Rates vary by role and seniority. See our savings by role page for typical ranges, then we'll confirm an exact rate for your role.
There are no cancellation fees or minimum commitments, and you only pay if you make a hire.
Yes, we only recruit for full-time and we strongly recommend full-time hiring if you can. Stability (full-time & long-term) is highly sought after abroad. The top caliber candidates are only looking for full-time work.
You're also going to spend time training and getting them up to speed on your processes. It would be a waste to do that over and over again with new people all the time.
We recommend training new hires on one thing at a time.
For example, once they get up to speed on lead generation, you can add the next role writing blog posts or whatever you'd like. You can definitely overlap roles until you have enough work for multiple people.
The cost of living is much less in Latin American countries. Many of our employees are able to own homes, raise families, provide for their parents, and have in-home help of their own with their salaries.
If you aren't happy with your hire in the first 120 days, we will work with you to conduct a second round of search for the same role for free.
Just email us at Hello@HireInSouth.com and we will get back to you with an answer as soon as possible.
