Distributed Systems Software Engineer - Public Cloud (Mid/Senior/Lead/Principal)

Own Company; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Salesforce is seeking a Distributed Systems Software Engineer for Public Cloud at senior/lead/principal level. You will design and operate large-scale, highly available backend services, leveraging AI-enabled development workflows and cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, and Azure.

Expected focus includes infrastructure automation, open source tooling, and robust on-call reliability across data centers. The role emphasizes AI-driven engineering, standards, and scalable architectures, with

Qualifications

• Related technical degree required.
• 3+ years backend software development experience.
• Proficiency in Java, GoLang, Python, or Ruby.
• Experience owning and operating multiple instances of a critical service.
• Genuine AI-first engineering approach.
• Experience using AI tools in development workflows.
• Advanced prompt engineering skills.
• Experience with Agile development methodology and Test Driven Development.
• Experience with monitoring, alerting, logging, and reporting applications.
• Experience with distributed databases and PostgreSQL is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Deliver cloud infrastructure automation tools, frameworks, workflows, and validation platforms on our public cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, Azure, or Alibaba.
• Designing, developing, debugging, and operating resilient distributed systems that run across thousands of compute nodes in multiple data centers.
• Using and contributing to open source technology (Spinnaker, Zookeeper, etc.).
• Developing Infrastructure-as-Code using Terraform.
• Writing microservices on containerization frameworks such as Kubernetes, Docker, Mesos.
• Build and ship high-quality, production-grade software using modern engineering practices, with AI as a core part of your development workflow by pushing the boundaries of AI development tools to deliver secure, optimized, and high-quality code.
• Design and orchestrate complex systems where AI agents integrate seamlessly into human workflows, driving efficiency and innovation at scale.
• Contribute to building and maintaining the shared system context, an explicit repository of system designs, constraints, and standards that enables AI to operate accurately and reliably.
• Critically evaluate code (Human or AI-generated) for correctness, quality, security, and performance.
• Resolving complex technical issues and drive innovations that improve system availability, resilience, and performance.
• Eat, sleep, and breathe services. You have experience balancing live-site management, feature delivery, and retirement of technical debt.
• Participate in the team's on-call rotation to address complex problems in real-time and keep services operational and highly available.

Skills

Backend development

Java

GoLang

Python

Ruby

AI-first engineering

AI tools

Agile development

Test Driven Development

Distributed systems

Education

Related technical degree

Tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

Docker

Spinnaker

Zookeeper

Mesos

Job description

Description

Distributed Systems Software Engineer - Public Cloud (Senior/Lead/Principal)

Note: By applying to the Public Cloud - Distributed Systems Software Engineer posting, recruiters and hiring managers across the organization hiring software engineers will review your resume. Our goal is for you to apply once and have your resume reviewed by multiple hiring teams.

Our Public Cloud engineering teams are responsible for innovating and maintaining a large scale distributed systems engineering platform that ships hundreds of features to production for tens of millions of users across all industries every day. Our users count on our platform to be highly reliable, lightning fast, supremely secure, and to preserve all of their customizations and integrations every time we ship.

You will need deep experience with concurrency, large scale systems, proficiency with solving real-world data management challenges, a strong understanding of how to craft solutions that are highly available, and a proven ability to design, develop, and optimize the core back-end systems. This role also requires Advanced prompt engineering skills — the ability to write precise, structured prompts and cultivate the system context that makes AI outputs reliable, secure, and production-ready.

Your Impact:

• Deliver cloud infrastructure automation tools, frameworks, workflows, and validation platforms on our public cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, Azure, or Alibaba

• Designing, developing, debugging, and operating resilient distributed systems that run across thousands of compute nodes in multiple data centers

• Using and contributing to open source technology (Spinnaker, Zookeeper, etc.)

• Developing Infrastructure-as-Code using Terraform

• Writing microservices on containerization frameworks such as Kubernetes, Docker, Mesos

• Build and ship high-quality, production-grade software using modern engineering practices, with AI as a core part of your development workflow by pushing the boundaries of AI development tools (Cursor, Windsurf, Claude, OpenAI API) to deliver secure, optimized, and high-quality code.

• Design and orchestrate complex systems where AI agents integrate seamlessly into human workflows, driving efficiency and innovation at scale.

• Contribute to building and maintaining the shared system context, an explicit repository of system designs, constraints, and standards that enables AI to operate accurately and reliably.

• Critically evaluate code (Human or AI-generated) for correctness, quality, security, and performance.

• Resolving complex technical issues and drive innovations that improve system availability, resilience, and performance

• Eat, sleep, and breathe services. You have experience balancing live-site management, feature delivery, and retirement of technical debt

• Participate in the team's on-call rotation to address complex problems in real-time and keep services operational and highly available

Required Skills:

• A related technical degree required

• 3+ years backend software development experience

• Deep knowledge of programming in Java, GoLang, Python, or Ruby

• Experience owning and operating multiple instances of a critical service

• A demonstrated, genuine AI-first approach to engineering. Using AI to move faster, build fluency across the stack, and contribute well beyond your core specialty.

• Experience using AI tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Codex, Cursor, etc.) in development workflows

• Advanced prompt engineering skills and the ability to write precise, structured prompts and cultivate the system context that makes AI outputs reliable, secure, and production-ready.

• Experience with Agile development methodology and Test Driven Development

• Experience with critical infrastructure services including, monitoring, alerting, logging, and reporting applications

• Experience with distributed database system and relational databases like postgres is a plus.

Benefits & Perks

Check out our benefits site which explains our various benefits, including wellbeing reimbursement, generous parental leave, adoption assistance, fertility benefits, and more.

Salesforce Information

Check out our Salesforce Engineering Site.

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance and the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, Salesforce will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

In the United States, compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, job level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Certain roles may be eligible for incentive compensation, equity, and benefits. Salesforce offers a variety of benefits to help you live well including: time off programs, medical, dental, vision, mental health support, paid parental leave, life and disability insurance, 401(k), and an employee stock purchasing program. More details about company benefits can be found at the following link: https://www.salesforcebenefits.com.