Building the agentic enterprise isn’t just about breaking records in tech. It’s about breaking down barriers for careers, too.

And nobody knows that better than Commercial Solution Engineer Cathy Xu.

Based in Sydney, Australia, she has experienced firsthand how the gap between go-to-market talent and technical impact is vanishing in the AI era—and opening the door to a new kind of career. One where support, ownership, and the right AI tools can be just as powerful as a traditional technical background. And where the right company can make the leap feel like less of a pivot, and more like a natural progression.

For Cathy, that company was none other than Snowflake, where she’s been redefining solution engineering and enterprise AI ever since.

Tell us about your path into tech. What did that look like and how did you find your way to Snowflake?
I initially started interning at a Big Tech company and was there for a little over four years. I actually had a number of roles during that time, from program management to solution engineering, and eventually sales. So, a lot of different hats and experiences, which is how I became familiar with Snowflake since so many customers used the platform.

Because of that, I decided to explore Snowflake a bit more and even asked a friend, Raymond Cai, what his experience was like working here. He talked about all the professional opportunities that checked a number of boxes. Solution engineering was something I knew I wanted to get back into, so when Snowflake posted a role specifically for people looking to pivot into the field, it seemed like it could be a great fit. But what really sold me was the onboarding process and the chance to work with commercial customers across both acquisition and expansion. That was the piece that made me go “Yep, this is the place.”

It’s not typical for the onboarding process itself to be a selling point.
I haven't worked for many organizations, but I've never had an onboarding experience like Snowflake’s. They really set you up for success from day one. We have an in-person boot camp in Menlo Park, where you get to build relationships and your technical acumen, run a realistic customer sales cycle, and practice the work you actually do in the field.

To graduate from the bootcamp, all the solution engineers have a capstone project, where you receive a specific scenario and build a solution in Snowflake. You get the data sources and then write the code to ingest that data, transform it, and then have to bring it into a consumption layer. Once that’s done, you present it as a proof of concept to your manager, who acts as a customer and asks questions to pressure-test your solution and strengthen your objection handling. Having all that up front really helped build my confidence.

Sounds like quite the boot camp! Beyond onboarding, how does that type of development and support continue to show up?
We get additional training every quarter to learn about all our new releases and attend TechUP once a year. This year’s event is in Phuket, and you basically get to connect with your peers and have an entire week dedicated to technical hands-on labs and enablement. So the recipe to succeed is baked into every step of your career, not just the start.

Another piece of that recipe is the Snowflake platform itself. Walk us through some of the AI tools you’ve been using lately.
CoCo has been game-changing. I build a lot of demos for customers, and now I’m able to customize them and introduce more detail and complexity to deliver more value. Sometimes, I’ll literally wake up the day of a demo and have a new idea—with CoCo, I can add it in about 30 minutes, then head into a customer meeting within an hour’s time and present it.

Aside from demos, another way I like to use it is when a customer needs something optimized for their environment or something needs to be fixed. CoCo can dig into their account and provide the information I need, so instead of me writing SQL and trying to figure that out manually, it’s right there.

With CoWork, I typically pull it up when I need information quickly on a customer call. I just open it up, type out my question, and have what I need to keep the conversation going.

Your job also means helping customers use Snowflake to level up, too. Any recent highlights where you saw that impact come to life?
We run something called Snow Camp, which is basically a day-long hackathon or lab that solution engineers and account executives put on together for customers. It’s usually for technical teams, but I recently hosted one for a customer’s business team where the participants were able to use CoCo to build working MVPs to solve real problems despite not having a typical technical background.

Obviously overseeing the build in real time was great, but after attending our hackathon, they actually brought all their executives into our office as well. They’re now rolling CoCo out across their organization, so driving that was really cool.

Being able to lead something like that is unique. As a solution engineer, what’s something you feel is uniquely “Snowflake?”
Snowflake is smaller than my previous company, so everyone's a lot closer knit. I’ve found that the AE-SE relationship is really strong as well. My AEs and I are always chatting and talking about what to do next, and you don’t necessarily get that at other places.

I think the other aspect that makes Snowflake different is you really get to position your role in the way that suits who you are as a person. I have a lot of ownership in the deals that I'm running. And because I like public speaking, I’ve been able to run webinars and even got to go on stage at Snowflake World Tour and run a demo using CoCo and CoWork.

The stage is yours once again: any final advice to anyone looking to join Snowflake’s Solution Engineering team?
When I came to Snowflake, my cohort during onboarding had people from all sorts of backgrounds, technical and non-technical. I've come to realize that as a solution engineer, you can be either. Having a bit of a sales background is really useful, but honestly, my advice is not to compare your background to anyone else’s. Everyone has different strengths—you just have to play to your own. That goes a long way, in the AI era and beyond.

Ready to break the barrier between your resume and building the agentic enterprise? Explore open roles at Snowflake.

Cathy Xu is a solution engineer based in Sydney, Australia. Prior to joining Snowflake in 2025, she held various roles at Microsoft, QBE Insurance, Merck Sharp & Dohme, and Westpac. She received both her Bachelor of Information Systems and Master of Data Science from the University of New South Wales.