Marcin Żukowski

Marcin Żukowski, an expert in data compression and columnar database technologies, co-founded Snowflake in 2012, bringing critical expertise in storage optimization that enabled the platform's highly efficient, consumption-based pricing model and exceptional gross margins.

Marcin Żukowski is a distinguished database researcher and the co-founder of Snowflake Inc., having earned his PhD in Computer Science for his pioneering research in database compression and columnar storage technologies. Żukowski's expertise in data compression algorithms and columnar database architectures was instrumental in the design of Snowflake's proprietary storage layer, which automatically organizes and compresses data into micro-partitions, drastically reducing the amount of storage required and the amount of data that must be read during a query. This technical breakthrough not only ensured sub-second query performance at petabyte scale but also established the foundation for Snowflake's highly efficient, consumption-based pricing model, where customers pay only for the exact volume of data stored and the precise number of compute seconds utilized. Along with Benoit Dageville and Thierry Cruanes, Żukowski left his previous roles in the database research community in 2012 to pursue the vision of a completely new cloud-native data warehouse, enduring a seven-year stealth development period to build the platform's core architecture from scratch. His contributions to Snowflake's storage optimization technologies have been critical to the company's ability to maintain industry-leading gross margins and deliver exceptional price-performance to its enterprise customers.