Simplify Snowflake RBAC at Scale with Terraform

How Leolytix uses Terraform to bring order, auditability, and scale to Snowflake access control.

Managing access in Snowflake is no small feat—especially as your data platform scales across teams, environments, and workloads. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is Snowflake’s most powerful security model, but implementing it in a consistent, auditable way often becomes a bottleneck. In fact, misconfigured or overly complex RBAC is one of the primary reasons organizations engage external consultants to regain control over their data governance and access.

In this article, we'll share how we’ve solved that problem using Terraform. By codifying the entire RBAC model—from global roles to database-level permissions—we’ve created a secure, scalable framework that supports both centralized and domain-specific access patterns.

Key Takeaways:

• Clear Role Hierarchy: A job-specific, layered role structure enforces least privilege while making access management transparent and easy to audit.
• Multi-Environment Support: Each environment (dev, stage, prod) is managed via isolated Terraform state files, ensuring safe and consistent deployments.
• Infrastructure as Code: All access logic is codified, version-controlled, and peer-reviewed—making it easy to track changes, enforce policies, and pass audits.
• Scoped Access with Database Roles: Enables fine-grained, schema-specific access without compromising the global RBAC model—perfect for consultants, contractors, and domain-specific teams.
• Built-In Operational Safeguards: Addresses real-world pitfalls like privilege dependencies, role destruction order, state drift, and access rollback complexity.

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This approach helps data teams shift from ad hoc access grants to a repeatable, secure process that can scale with growing organizational demands.

Whether you’re building from scratch or cleaning up a legacy RBAC implementation, this guide provides a field-tested blueprint to streamline Snowflake security with Terraform.

Read the full Medium tutorial for detailed code examples, architectural patterns, and implementation tips.