Snieckus was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1937. His family lived in Germany during World War II and in 1948 immigrated to Alberta, Canada. Snieckus received his bachelors degree in chemistry from University of Alberta in 1959, his masters degree from University of California, Berkeley in 1961, and his PhD from the University of Oregon in 1965 under the supervision of Virgil Boekelheide. He spent a year as a postdoctoral scholar at the National Research Council of Canada.