Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) (Mid/Senior Level)

Salesforce; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 89,000 - 288,000; Full time

Job summary

Salesforce, Inc. is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to prototype and deliver AI agent solutions for large enterprises. You’ll design prompts, integrate with customer systems, and own components end-to-end, while working closely with customers and mentors.

You will build data pipelines across Salesforce Data 360, Snowflake, and Databricks, and develop dashboards to track KPI outcomes. Travel ~25% is expected in this customer-facing, tech-delivery role.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of software engineering or technical delivery experience, with at least one production system in an AI tech stack.
• Degree in Computer Science or a related field.
• Prior customer-facing technical delivery experience (consulting, professional services, or forward deployed engineering).
• Fluent in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, or Apex; willing to expand.
• Hands-on with LLMs and prompt engineering; able to explain prompt failures and improvements.
• Understanding of data modeling, APIs, and integration patterns.
• Comfortable presenting to sales teams and customer architects.
• Willing to travel ~25% of the time.

Responsibilities

• Develop AI agents and experiences in production for large enterprises using our Agentforce and AI tools.
• Design agent intelligence including prompts, reasoning, tool calls, and integration with customer systems.
• Own technical components end-to-end from architecture to deployment and observability.
• Build and maintain data pipelines on Salesforce Data 360, Snowflake, Databricks, and customer data platforms.
• Create dashboards and KPI reporting to monitor deployment health and outcomes.
• Contribute to proofs-of-concept and MVPs to move from sketch to deployable quickly.
• Co-build with customers and partners, sharing best practices and enabling teams.
• Surface platform gaps and feed insights to senior engineers and product teams.

Skills

Software engineering

Customer-facing delivery

Programming languages

LLMs & prompt engineering

Data modeling & APIs

Team collaboration

Willing to travel

Education

Computer Science degree or related field

Job description

Job Category

Sales

Job Details

About Salesforce

Salesforce is the #1 AI CRM, where humans with agents drive customer success together. Here, ambition meets action. Tech meets trust. And innovation isn’t a buzzword — it’s a way of life. The world of work as we know it is changing and we’re looking for Trailblazers who are passionate about bettering business and the world through AI, driving innovation, and keeping Salesforce’s core values at the heart of it all.

Ready to level-up your career at the company leading workforce transformation in the agentic era? You’re in the right place! Agentforce is the future of AI, and you are the future of Salesforce.

Applications for this position will be accepted on an ongoing basis.

The Experience

The Forward Deployed Engineer Experience

• AI-Powered Development: Ship real customer solutions, supported by best-in-class AI tools — Cursor, Claude, and Salesforce coding products like Vibes — embedded into your day-to-day workflow.
• Collaborative Delivery: You’ll work alongside Senior Forward Deployed Engineers and a Deployment Strategist. You’ll own real components, benefit from structured mentorship from people who’ve shipped agentic systems at scale, and have a clear path to leading complex deliveries yourself.
• Frontier Access: Our agentic AI platform is evolving in real time. You’ll work on capabilities most engineers won’t touch for months — spanning Agentforce, data, platform, and headless architectures and your field insight will feed directly to the product teams building them.
• Continuous Innovation: You’ll be expected to stay at the forefront, experimenting with emerging AI tools, models, and frameworks, and sharing what you learn with your team and customers.

What You'll Actually Be Doing

• Develop AI agents and experiences that take real actions for real organizations. Our solutions are in production at some of the largest enterprises on the planet. The work matters because the customers depend on it.
• Design agent intelligence: prompts, reasoning, tool calls, and integration with customer systems, leveraging our Agentic AI platform and current LLM techniques.
• Own technical components end-to-end: from architecture choice to deployed, validated, and observable in production.
• Build and integrate data pipelines on Salesforce Data 360, Snowflake, Databricks, and customer data platforms. Model the data, ship the pipeline, validate the output
• Build and maintain agent performance dashboards and customer KPI reporting to track deployment health and business outcomes.
• Contribute to proofs-of-concept and MVPs that move from sketch to deployable in days, not months.
• Co-build alongside customers and partners, sharing best practices and enablement as you go. Leaving teams more capable after each engagement than before.
• Surface platform gaps, edge cases, and field insights to senior Engineers and the product team. Your real-world experience is the product feedback loop.
• Partner with the Deployment Strategist in your pod to translate customer business challenges into agentic solutions that actually ship.

You’re Our Person If...

• You have 3+ years (6-10 years for Senior levels) of software engineering or technical delivery experience, with at least one production system you’d be proud to walk us through - ideally in an AI tech stack, full-stack development, or working with frontier models
• You have a degree in Computer Science or a related field
• You have prior customer-facing technical delivery experience (consulting, professional services, or forward deployed engineering) — this is a requirement, not a nice-to-have.
• You’re fluent in at least one of Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, or Apex — and willing to add to that list as the work demands.
• You’ve been hands-on with LLMs and prompt engineering. You can explain why a prompt failed and what you’d change.
• You understand data modeling, APIs, and integration patterns deeply enough to design them, not just consume them.
• You can hold your own in a room with sales teams and customer architects.
• You ship quality code and evaluate AI outputs with engineering rigor.
• You actively tinker with the evolving AI/data landscape — piloting new tools, experimenting with new models, and staying genuinely curious about what’s coming next.
• You thrive in the group chat that’s building something, not just talking about it.
• You’re excited to travel ~25% of the time, working directly alongside customers.

Even Better If...

• Salesforce platform experience or certifications (Administrator, Platform Developer I, Agentforce Specialist)
• Familiarity with agent frameworks (LangChain, LlamaIndex) and orchestration patterns
• Hands-on with cloud data platforms (Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery)
• Experience across specialist AI delivery areas: data engineering, platform architecture, or headless deployments

Unleash Your Potential

When you join Salesforce, you’ll be limitless in all areas of your life. Our benefits and resources support you to find balance and be your best, and our AI agents accelerate your impact so you can do your best. Together, we’ll bring the power of Agentforce to organizations of all sizes and deliver amazing experiences that customers love.

Accommodations

If you need a reasonable accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please submit a request via this Accommodations Request Form.

Posting Statement

Salesforce is an equal opportunity employer and maintains a policy of non-discrimination with all employees and applicants for employment. What does that mean exactly? It means that at Salesforce, we believe in equality for all. And we believe we can lead the path to equality in part by creating a workplace that’s inclusive, and free from discrimination. Know your rights: workplace discrimination is illegal. Any employee or potential employee will be assessed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications – without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, transgender status, age, disability, veteran or marital status, political viewpoint, or other classifications protected by law. This policy applies to current and prospective employees, no matter where they are in their Salesforce employment journey. It also applies to recruiting, hiring, job assignment, compensation, promotion, benefits, training, assessment of job performance, discipline, termination, and everything in between. Recruiting, hiring, and promotion decisions at Salesforce are fair and based on merit. The same goes for compensation, benefits, promotions, transfers, reduction in workforce, recall, training, and education.

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. 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.

At Salesforce, we believe in equitable compensation practices that reflect the dynamic nature of labor markets across various regions. The typical base salary range for this position is $88,970 - $287,910 annually. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations. In California and New York, and select cities in the metropolitan areas of Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and Washington DC, the base pay range for this role in those locations is $97,860 - $316,750 per year. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for the job location during the hiring process. The range represents base salary only, and does not include company bonus, incentive for sales roles, equity or benefits, as applicable.