Sr. Engagement Manager, Frontier Engineering
Snowflake · Auckland, New Zealand · 21h ago
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.
LEAD. STRATEGIZE. TRANSFORM.
Summary
Frontier Engineering's mission is to engineer guaranteed customer outcomes on Snowflake, the trusted control plane for AI-first business. We bring Snowflake engineers, AI specialists, and industry experts together with customers to modernize their data foundations and put AI into production, delivering measurable ROI in weeks and months, not quarters and years. We operate through two transformation engines: Data Transformation, which helps customers migrate, modernize, consolidate, and govern the data foundation that AI depends on; and Agentic Transformation, which helps customers build agents, intelligent applications, and AI-powered workflows that reimagine how their business runs.
As our first Engagement Manager based in New Zealand, you will be Frontier Engineering's in-market leader for your accounts across both Data Transformation and Agentic Transformation, and the single point of accountability for engagement outcomes, from first conversation through scoping, contracting, delivery, and expansion. You will work hand-in-hand with New Zealand account teams and with our Australia-based Services Solution Managers and Sales Solution Architects as one team: you bring local customer intimacy, deal shaping, and delivery leadership; they bring commercial and technical scoping depth. Together you will sell, shape, and deliver Frontier Engineering engagements that turn into production outcomes: Snowflake consumption and realized customer value.
Why This Role?
Build a market: Be the founding Frontier Engineering Engagement Manager in New Zealand, shaping how Snowflake delivers outcomes for some of the country's most important organizations.
Sell, shape, and deliver: Own the engagement lifecycle end to end, with clear line of sight from a customer's business problem to the value delivered in production.
Work at the frontier: Lead engagements across both Data Transformation (migration, modernization, governance) and Agentic Transformation (agents, AI applications, intelligent workflows), bringing capabilities like Cortex, Horizon, Iceberg, and Openflow into production for customers.
Grow with us: A clear pathway to Principal level for those who demonstrate portfolio ownership, deal engineering, and market leadership.
What You'll Do
Sell & Shape
In-Market Pursuit Leadership: Be the local Frontier Engineering point of contact for New Zealand Account Executives; qualify opportunities with account teams and engage early with executive sponsors to identify the business problem worth solving.
Discovery & Value Shaping: Lead customer discovery and journey workshops in New Zealand that align on use-case priorities, target outcomes, and the business case; anchor every engagement to measurable value (revenue growth, cost reduction, risk reduction, faster time to value).
Deal Shaping in Partnership: Work with Services Solution Managers on commercial strategy, value-based pricing, proposals, and Statements of Work (SOWs), and with Sales Solution Architects on solution scoping and estimation. Pressure-test scope, assumptions, and estimates for deliverability and margin before contract, and support internal Deal Review and approval.
Forecast & Pipeline: Contribute to and maintain an accurate bookings forecast and pipeline for your New Zealand accounts alongside your Services Solution Manager and account team partners.
Account Expansion: Build services roadmaps with account teams and identify "white space" where new Snowflake capabilities solve customer business problems, turning point engagements into multi-phase transformation programs.
Partner Ecosystem: Work with SI, GSI, and ISV partners in New Zealand on co-delivery and co-sell approaches, extending delivery capacity under Frontier Engineering standards.
Deliver
Sales-to-Delivery Ownership: Own the handoff from pursuit to delivery, ensuring delivery readiness and that what was sold is what gets delivered; lead engagement kick-off to align stakeholders on scope, roles, timeline, and success metrics.
Integrated Execution: Lead engagements through go-live and close-out; manage Work Breakdown Structures (WBS), RAID logs, and critical-path scheduling to mitigate schedule variance across multi-workstream technical implementations.
Scope Protection: Identify scope creep in real time and negotiate protective Change Orders that safeguard project integrity and customer trust.
Financial Ownership: Own engagement financials, including revenue forecasting, budget burn-down, cost control, and high Estimate at Completion (EAC) accuracy, protecting margin while delivering customer satisfaction.
Escalation Leadership: Serve as the initial point of escalation for customers, partners, and project teams; lead decision-making in high-pressure situations.
Value Realization & Close-out: Drive knowledge transfer, final retrospectives, and value readouts; secure customer references and identify the next opportunity.
Advise & Improve
Executive Engagement: Engage C-level and VP stakeholders to create and execute services roadmaps that drive real business outcomes; communicate risks and wins with clarity and transparency.
Voice of the Customer: Translate field-level technical blockers into actionable feedback for Snowflake Product and Engineering teams.
Practice Contribution: Feed delivery learnings back into scoping and estimation with Sales Solution Architects, contribute to Frontier Engineering reusable assets and playbooks, and use AI-assisted workflows (e.g., Snowflake Cortex Code for SOW drafting and engagement summaries) to work faster and smarter.
Operational Hygiene: Maintain accurate Salesforce and financial system data for your portfolio, and support utilization of delivery resources.
Our Ideal Candidate Will Have
Experience: Typically a minimum of 8 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree, or 6 years with a Master's degree, or equivalent experience.
Sales & Delivery Background: 10+ years in a Sales and Services Delivery role interfacing with executives on complex technical implementation projects such as cloud data warehouse and data platform implementation, modernization, or AI/ML adoption.
Track Record: Proven achievement of quantitative targets such as bookings, utilization, consumption, and delivery margin.
Deal Shaping: Demonstrated experience leading discovery, shaping scope and value propositions, and closing services deals as part of a sales team.
Execution Rigor: Hands-on mastery of project governance (WBS, RAID, critical path), change management, and project financials (EAC).
Executive Presence: Ability to command a room of C-suite executives while holding technical credibility in deep-dives with engineering and data science teams.
Domain Expertise: Direct experience across data platform modernization (data warehousing, migration, BI, cloud data platforms) and AI/ML or GenAI adoption, with the range to lead both data foundation and AI application engagements; able to pivot from a high-level architecture discussion to a detailed task breakdown.
Collaboration Across Distance: Proven ability to work as one team with sales, pre-sales, and delivery colleagues across locations, building trust and alignment without relying on co-location, as a remote-based team member.
Adaptability: Comfortable switching instantly between sales support, project governance, and hands-on crisis management, and managing multiple accounts and projects in parallel with a high degree of autonomy.
Bonus Points
Established network across New Zealand enterprise, government, or the local SI and partner community.
Big 5 or boutique strategy consulting experience.
Experience in a technical advisory role such as solution architect or technical account manager.
Hands-on project experience with the Snowflake AI Data Cloud or other cloud data platforms on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
Experience building a services practice or team presence in a new market.
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