The high latitude permafrost regions are sensitive to global climate change. Revealing the change regularity of soil microbial community structure under different snow cover conditions is of great significance to predict the response of cold region forest ecosystem to global climate change. We took Betula platyphylla secondary forest in permafrost region of Great Hing'an Mountains as the research object. The dynamic change characteristics of soil microbial community structure treated with natural snow cover and snow shade were compared and analyzed by using phospholipid fatty acid method (PLFA). The results showed that the total PLFA content of soil was the highest at the initial stage of vegetation growth and the lowest at the stage of snow stabilization. Of which the higher PLFA content were 18:2ω6,9c, a15:0, i16:0, 17:1ω8c, 18:1ω9c and 16:1ω5c, and the prevalent PLFA content varied in different periods. The snow shade significantly reduced the bacterial PLFA content and increased the fungi PLFA content at the stage of snow stabilization (P<0.05), but it had no significant effect on soil microbial community structure and diversity in other periods. The redundancy analysis showed that the total PLFA content of soil, fungi, fungi/bacteria, and gram-negative bacterial were significantly positively correlated with soil water content, pH and NH₄-N, whereas bacteria and gram-positive bacterial were significantly influenced by total phosphorus, total nitrogen and NO₃-N of soil.