Snowflake is open to negotiating and they are typically respond well to cross offers. It's worth noting that they don't frequently lowball - their initial offers, especially for more senior roles, are competitive. However, they do have some tricky negotiation tactics. We've seen them be non-committal on leveling and add in last minute deadlines, as just two examples.
- Base Salary
- Snowflake Equity (see Snowflake’s vesting schedule below)
- Performance Bonus (targets do vary by level)
- Stock Refreshers
Snowflake offers typically have a 15% bonus targets for most levels. These bonuses are paid out quarterly. For some more senior Snowflake levels (e.g. IC4+), the bonus target goes up to 20%.
Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman has talked about how remote work is the future, so it's not a surprise that Snowflake supports remote work options. However, this doesn't stop Snowflake from modifying compensation based on employee location. You can expect discounts in lower cost of living markets.
As Snowflake is very open to remote work, there aren't too many situations where they will require you to move. This of course decreases the chance you are offered a relocation package. If for some reason you are required to move to join a specific team, you should always push for a $10k+ relocation package.
The most flexible component is Snowflake equity compensation. There is certainly more room to increase equity compared to base salary where the ranges are small. Snowflake's comp structure is relatively unique because there is no Snowflake signing bonus, which is typically a key negotiation lever.
Snowflake does not require written offers. Sometimes they will come back and ask for more details when you share a competing offer, but more often there tactic is to explode offers and make it tricky to line up timelines.
Snowflake usually begins with a strong initial offer and they are receptive to counter offers when framed correctly. During your Snowflake offer negotiation, they will typically push back quite hard if you try for multiple rounds of negotiation. This is why it's critical to have a negotiation strategy in place from the beginning and make sure to set the right anchor in the first round.
It is always beneficial to have a strong relationship with your hiring manager. However, recruiters and managers have less control over Snowflake salaries because the company has a compensation committee.
Snowflake's hiring process looks different for different roles. However, for most engineering roles, they typically have 4 stages: initial screen, technical interview, panel interview and offer stage.
The first interview will be conducted over a phone call where you will chat about your background and experience. This is a good opportunity to understand the hiring process and the role better.
The second interview will assess your technical skills. You get to show off your skills via CoderPad.
The third round is a panel interview where you’ll be asked questions regarding company values and your technical experience.
Lastly, if you succeed and a Snowflake offer package is extended, your Snowflake salary negotiation process will begin.
Let’s consider a Snowflake software engineer salary vs a Databricks software engineer salary. Databricks tends to pay a little higher than Snowflake. For instance, consider IC3, in 2021, the top of band comp was around $425k/year at Snowflake and around 520k/year for Databricks.
While Snowflake’s base pay and equity should be the focus of your negotiation. There are of course other perks that are offered by the company. They also provide health benefits (including dental), retirement plans like the 401K plans and paid time off for vacations and new parents. You can read more about the benefits on their website here.
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Equivalent Level at Google
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Our Clients Love Rora
Coming from a non-FAANG background, I was shocked to find out how much I could be earning. Before I signed up with Rora, I made the mistake of telling Amazon my current compensation. Thankfully, Rora knew exactly how to fix it and ended up getting me an offer that was 2.3X what I previously made and more than $600K higher than Amazon’s initial offer!
Through several weeks of interviews, Ganesh was always available to make sure I knew what to say for each conversation. I interviewed with start ups, Google, Facebook and Amazon and was really impressed that Rora knew the comp ranges and were able to give me tailored advice for each – even the start ups.
There ended up being two particularly complex moments in my negotiation. One of the start-ups I had a personal relationship with and I wasn’t sure how it would affect the negotiation. I like that there was a focus on my individual circumstances and that they were leveraged to get me a higher offer. The other situation is that Amazon made a mistake on my written offer and initially wouldn’t rectify it. Ganesh was able to guide me through a challenging conversation to get it resolved.
Thanks to Wilson and the team at Rora I got a ~$250K increase on my remote Facebook offer! I was initially worried I wouldn’t have much leverage because Facebook reached out to me, and I wasn’t interviewing anywhere else. Rora introduced me to an Amazon L7 recruiter and helped me get that process started. I didn’t even end up needing to finish the Amazon interviews, since we were able to use some early compensation conversations to justify our numbers to Facebook.
At one point I was also considering pushing for an E7 role, and they wrote up a great script for me to broach the subject with my recruiter. She ended up giving me the option to do an additional interview to be considered for the higher-level position.
The whole process was very smooth, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use the service for any future negotiations. I found the regular calls with Wilson where we walked through strategy and discussed the scripts to be extremely helpful. Not only did it help with this negotiation, but I also learned a lot of useful negotiation tactics that I’ve already started to use in other situations.
As an engineering leader with decades of experience and having now gone through the negotiation with the team at Rora, the only thing I can say is — get the help. Whether you realize you need it, or even if you think you don’t. Just because you have done well in engineering doesn't mean that you understand the tactics and limits of the recruiting process.
Rora helped me get a $200K increase on my original Facebook offer without any competing offers. It was clear that Rora was deeply familiar with Facebook's negotiation playbook. I’d honestly give the experience an 11/10.
In addition, Rora guided me on how to get the position switched to a revised remote role which was a huge deal at a personal level. They showed me how to redirect FB’s questions so that I could explore the possibility of not relocating, without ever having to say no to my original offer.
This is my first FAANG role and I'm so happy I worked with Rora (thanks again Annie!) for the negotiation. My goal was to increase my Google offer, but I was in a tricky situation where I only had 1 other interview (no offer yet) at a small startup. With their guidance, I managed to get a $240K increase on my Google offer, despite Google's policy of requiring cross offers in writing to justify an increase.
The mock negotiations were a big part of why I was able to get this increase. Going into the negotiation, I assumed the key factor was what to say but I quickly learned that how you say it is equally if not more important. This was clear when over the course of the call"no" turned into "I'll see what I can do" and eventually"I think we can make this work". A big part of this was also having someone with me on the calls to provide real time guidance. This took a lot of the stress out of the situation. I can't recommend this team highly enough!
After receiving several job offers, I needed to make a decision within a few days. I wanted to make sure I was getting the best offer possible, so I decided to use Rora. I was very pleased with their service. My coach, Sameer, was well prepared and had information about what compensation increases were likely possible. He provided detailed scripts covering a range of scenarios, and he did practice negotiations with me that helped me feel confident when I had the actual conversations.
With his help I was able to increase one offer by $45k per year plus get a $50k signing bonus and then use that to increase my offer from Square, which was my first choice. All throughout he was very responsive as I was dealing with some tight deadlines and looking to wrap things up quickly. Rora's fee was only a tiny fraction of the increase they helped me negotiate, and even though they would have made more money if I had taken the highest offer, Sameer always put my goals first and never pressured me to do so. I highly recommend Rora!
My friend introduced me to Rora and I’m so glad they did. I initially did some calculations to see if working with them would be worth it - my final increase ended up being ~3x higher than what I had estimated to be possible!
Their data is much more accurate than anything I found online. Without Sameer's guidance, I would have never known (and would have probably been too nervous) to ask for >$800K for anAmazon L7 offer. Of course, it's not just not enough to throw out a big number, you also need to be able to justify it. Sameer guided me through negotiating an up-level at another company, which I didn’t even know was possible at my level. With their scripts, I was able to leverage my competing offer to get exec approval for my Amazon offer. They also knew all the tricks Amazon would play (e.g., assuming 15% stock appreciation) and exactly how to counter them.
My total 4-year compensation increased by $570K. I don't think I've ever had a higher ROI – I’m very thankful that this service exists!
Snowflake
has a unique set of negotiation policies. If you don’t have experience negotiating with them, you risk losing out on large amounts of money because of very small mistakes.
There are many of these rules you need to know to get the highest
Snowflake
offer possible.
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Company-specific negotiation guides
