OPT Staff Software Engineer Jobs
Staff Software Engineer roles qualify for OPT work authorization, including the 24-month STEM OPT extension for graduates in computer science, software engineering, and related fields. These senior-level positions typically require seven or more years of experience and involve leading technical architecture, mentoring engineers, and driving large-scale system design.
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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.
Senior Software Engineer — Cortex Training
The Snowflake ML Platform team's mission is to let customers run their most demanding ML/AI workloads inside Snowflake. Cortex Training is our LLM post-training platform: it turns scarce, expensive GPU capacity into a simple, composable service, so customers can adapt open-weight foundation models to their own business problems while we handle the hard distributed-systems parts, including scheduling, orchestration, multi-node training and inference, fault tolerance, and throughput.
The platform already runs post-training at scale. Under the hood, it decouples GPU computation from the training loop and exposes it as primitive APIs that compose into everything from SFT to full RL workflows. You'll work alongside a team that ships fast & sweats reliability and the researchers behind DeepSpeed. We're looking for an engineer who thrives in the ML infrastructure layer and brings a solid understanding of LLMs and post-training to help us scale and grow it.
YOU WILL:
- Design and build across the full stack — from the public training APIs and SDK through the control plane to the GPU data plane.
- Scale the distributed systems that make GPU compute serverless — multi-tenant scheduling, placement, and capacity-aware routing across regional GPU pools, with fault tolerance built in.
- Drive end-to-end performance at scale — keep the training, inference, and RL loops fast and the data plane responsive under heavy concurrent load, with GPUs kept saturated.
- Productionize research building blocks — partner with Snowflake Research to turn state-of-the-art training and inference techniques into reliable, composable components customers can run at enterprise scale.
QUALIFICATIONS:
- 3 + years (Intermediate) | 6+ years (Senior) building and shipping production ML systems
- Strong distributed systems and infrastructure foundation — designing scalable, fault-tolerant services and operating them on Kubernetes in production.
- Familiarity with GPU and LLM infrastructure — e.g., PyTorch, DeepSpeed/FSDP, Ray, CUDA/NCCL, vLLM; able to debug across the data, infrastructure, and GPU layers.
- Demonstrated ability to harden complex systems for reliability, throughput, and cost efficiency.
- BS in Computer Science or a related field (MS/PhD a plus).
- (Bonus) Hands-on LLM post-training / modeling experience — the strongest candidates pair deep infra skills with real post-training intuition.
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
The following represents the expected range of compensation for this role:
- The estimated base salary range for this role is $200,000 - $287,500.
- Additionally, this role is eligible to participate in Snowflake’s bonus and equity plan.
The successful candidate’s starting salary will be determined based on permissible, non-discriminatory factors such as skills, experience, and geographic location. This role is also eligible for a competitive benefits package that includes: medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance; 401(k) retirement plan; flexible spending & health savings account; at least 12 paid holidays; paid time off; parental leave; employee assistance program; and other company benefits.
To comply with pay transparency requirements and other statutes, you can notify us if you believe that a job posting is not compliant by completing this form.
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Get Access To All JobsTips for Finding OPT Sponsorship as a Staff Software Engineer
Target STEM-designated degree holders first
Confirm your degree appears on the official STEM OPT eligible CIP code list before applying. Computer science, electrical engineering, and information systems degrees qualify. This maximizes your authorized work period and makes you more attractive to employers weighing sponsorship timelines.
Emphasize technical scope and ownership
Staff-level roles require demonstrated ownership of large systems, not just task completion. Quantify impact: services you architected, uptime improvements you drove, or team size you influenced. Employers at this level expect candidates who operate with minimal direction and set technical direction.
Address OPT timing proactively in applications
Recruiters screening Staff candidates often assume immigration is complicated. A brief note clarifying your current OPT authorization period and STEM extension eligibility removes hesitation early. Framing it factually and confidently signals you understand the process and have planned accordingly.
Prioritize companies with established H-1B sponsorship history
Large technology companies and well-funded startups that have sponsored H-1B visa petitions before have legal and HR infrastructure already in place. They're far less likely to decline a strong Staff candidate over visa concerns than companies encountering sponsorship for the first time.
Use your technical network to access unadvertised roles
Many Staff Software Engineer positions are filled through referrals before any job listing is published. Reconnect with former colleagues, contribute to open-source projects, and engage engineering communities where principal and staff engineers are active. A warm introduction bypasses early screening filters entirely.
Time your job search around your OPT expiration window
Start applying at least four to five months before your OPT authorization ends. Staff-level hiring processes involve multiple interview rounds and can take six to ten weeks. Beginning early gives you room to negotiate without the pressure of an imminent work authorization gap.
Staff Software Engineer OPT: Frequently Asked Questions
Can I work as a Staff Software Engineer on OPT without H-1B sponsorship?
Yes. OPT authorizes full-time employment in a role directly related to your field of study, and Staff Software Engineer positions qualify for graduates with degrees in computer science, software engineering, or related STEM fields. You can work for the duration of your OPT period without your employer needing to file any petition on your behalf, though most Staff candidates pursue H-1B sponsorship before OPT expires.
Does the STEM OPT extension apply to Staff Software Engineer roles?
Yes, provided your degree is in a STEM-designated field and your employer is enrolled in E-Verify. The 24-month STEM OPT extension gives you up to three years of total post-graduation work authorization. Staff Software Engineer roles at companies using E-Verify satisfy the employer requirement, which makes this one of the more straightforward job categories for STEM OPT students to navigate.
How hard is it to find Staff Software Engineer jobs that sponsor OPT students?
Staff-level engineering roles are senior enough that employers genuinely compete for qualified candidates, which improves your leverage on visa-related conversations. Companies that have hired at this level before typically have the legal infrastructure to sponsor. Migrate Mate filters specifically for OPT-friendly employers, so you can focus your search on companies that have already demonstrated willingness to work with international candidates rather than guessing from a general job listing.
What happens if I'm on OPT and my Staff Software Engineer contract ends before H-1B is approved?
If your OPT authorization expires and your H-1B petition is pending under cap-gap protection, you may continue working through September 30 of the lottery year if your petition was properly filed on time. If there's no pending petition, you enter the 60-day grace period and cannot work during that window. Planning your contract timeline and H-1B filing schedule carefully with your employer's immigration counsel is critical at the Staff level.
Do Staff Software Engineer roles require any special OPT reporting compared to junior roles?
The reporting obligations are the same regardless of seniority. You must report your employer, job title, start date, and any changes in employment to your DSO within 10 days through your school's system. For Staff roles, the job title and duties should closely align with your degree field in your OPT documentation. Role misalignment is a common audit issue, so keeping your DSO records current and accurate matters.