Even with summer heating up, it feels a lot like winter in the Spring District.
Snowflake, the cloud computing and data giant, officially cut the ribbon on its new Bellevue, Wash., office on Tuesday, unveiling an appreciative nod to the Pacific Northwest’s natural surroundings across an expansive tech workspace.
The company and more than 700 employees moved a month ago from space they outgrew in downtown Bellevue. Snowflake is now subleasing the entire Block 6 building from Meta, although it has only built out five of the 11 floors, or roughly 150,000 square feet.
Floor six is already being worked on, and the plan — as spelled out in a “sea-to-summit” design aesthetic — is to eventually grow all the way to the top. And, based on much of the decor, perhaps ski back down.
“We’re just seeing phenomenal success with our product, so that’s driving growth,” said Warrick Taylor, vice president of Workplace and Real Estate for Snowflake.
Headquartered in Bozeman, Mont., Snowflake first planted its flag in the Seattle region in 2017. The 13-year-old company, which also just opened a major new engineering office in Menlo Park, Calif., has grown to 8,000 global employees.
Snowflake went public in 2020, raising $3.4 billion in what was the largest software IPO ever at the time. The company reported revenue of $1 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, up 26% from $828.7 million a year earlier. It’s the first time the company has recorded more than $1 billion in sales in a quarter.
Snowflake is one of more than 100 companies with engineering hubs in the Seattle area.
Like many new and remodeled tech office spaces, from Amazon to Microsoft and others in between, Snowflake is embracing a collaborative workplace feel with plenty of gathering and meeting spaces for employees who are still adjusting to post-pandemic office life.
Snowflake is leaning into its name and peppering the space with a wintry mix of murals, fireplaces, and other design touches that give the nondescript, dark steel and glass office building a ski lodge feel on the inside. Polar bears, mountains, skiers, snow-covered pine trees and more are painted in the reception area, hallways, the elevator banks, and eating spaces.
There’s a large kitchen and dining area featuring several themed eateries on the fourth floor and a sizable fitness center and yoga studio on the ground floor to work off the calories.
Construction began 18 months ago in the previously unfinished space, led by JPC Architects and general contractor Skyline Construction.
Snowflake requires employees to spend three days of their choosing per week in-office.
“We have taken everything that we’ve learned about how people work in those two years post-Covid and applied it into this building,” Taylor said. “They’re coming in for collaboration, meetings, events. They’re coming in for the social aspects of being in the same place.”
Meta previously gobbled up much of the planned office space at the Spring District, a sprawling development northeast of downtown Bellevue, including a building that was originally going to be a new REI headquarters. But it has subleased some of the space since then and currently owns or leases roughly 1.86 million square feet, according to a Meta spokesperson.
Tuesday’s Snowflake ribbon-cutting attracted CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy; co-founder and president of product Benoit Dageville; Bellevue office lead and director of engineering Gjorgji Georgievski; Bellevue Mayor Lynn Robinson; and other company execs and city officials.
“Being able to open an office of this size is both exhilarating and humbling,” Ramaswamy said, as he and others from Snowflake joined the mayor in expressing a desire to continue working and growing together.
“Like the airlines say, ‘We know you could have chosen another city, we’re glad you chose us,’” Robinson said. “For 15 years, the City of Bellevue has been working on making this a place where you would want to be. You are in an innovation ecosystem here where you’re going to fit and you’re going to lead.”
Keep scrolling for more photos from GeekWire’s Snowflake office tour:
Read the full article here
