Senior Director, Performance Engineering

Salesforce, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 218,000 - 365,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k)

Employee stock purchase program

Comprehensive health benefits

Job summary

Salesforce is seeking a Senior Director to own the SDB Performance technology line. You will craft and deliver the V2MOM, set direction for performance across the database engine, storage service, and query processing, and lead a distributed team across multiple clouds.

You will oversee architecture decisions, production performance, and capacity planning while driving benchmarking, telemetry, and incident response.

Qualifications

• BS or higher in CS, EE, or a related field.
• 10+ years of engineering management experience, including 5+ years managing other managers.
• 15+ years in performance engineering or software engineering on databases, storage, or distributed systems.
• Strong CS fundamentals and the ability to engage on designs and code in Java or C/C++.
• Experience leading portfolios across multiple releases and collaborating with cross-cloud teams.

Responsibilities

• Own the SDB Performance technology line. Craft and deliver the V2MOM for that portfolio, on a horizon of a year or more.
• Set the direction for performance and scalability across the database engine, storage service, and query processing, and bring peer leadership along.
• Own architectural decisions of the performance organization and ensure a consistent design process with partner clouds.
• Own performance qualification of SalesforceDB releases and document production performance across qualification, production, capacity, and query optimization.
• Lead benchmarking and modeling to guide hardware selection and capacity planning with telemetry and dashboards.
• Drive a production-first culture of service ownership and coordinate incident response across the cloud.
• Develop talent from Manager through Director, and coach engineers from early career through principal.

Skills

Leadership

Strategic planning

People management

Performance engineering

Databases

SQL

Cloud platforms

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS

MS/PhD in databases or distributed systems

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Splunk

JVM/Java

C/C++

Job description

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.

The Experience

Are you a performance leader who still loves the details? A systems performance expert? A builder of teams and of systems? Want to be part of something big? How about owning the performance of the distributed database technology that is powering growth of the Salesforce Platform across the globe? SalesforceDB is the transactional database behind Salesforce CRM. It runs more than 1.1 trillion transactions per month on thousands of database instances. The Salesforce Database team is fast-paced and highly collaborative, and works across all areas of our distributed transactional database technology stack. We are seeking a Senior Director to own the SDB Performance technology line: the strategy, the organization, and the results that drive Salesforce DataBase. You set direction on a year-plus horizon and you are accountable for it. You craft and deliver the V2MOM for the performance portfolio. You are a subject‑matter expert in how a large distributed database behaves in production, and you build the managers and principal engineers who turn that expertise into shipped improvements. You are comfortable making hard calls on priority, resourcing, and trust, and you stand behind the outcomes. Our performance organization partners closely with database and storage system developers, query processing engineers, application performance engineers, infrastructure engineers, and our analytics team to deliver all the pieces that add up to high performance in production at scale. Your organization's improvements ship across the whole production fleet every release, and some of our work is published at database research conferences such as CIDR. We are a high‑performing team with high standards: we value integrity, rigor, and continuous learning.

What You'll Actually Be Doing

• Own the SDB Performance technology line. Craft and deliver the V2MOM for that portfolio, on a planning horizon of a year or more
• Set the direction for performance and scalability across the database engine, storage service, and query processing, and bring peer leadership along to see it through
• Be accountable for architecture: own the architectural decisions of the performance organization, and hold a consistent architecture and design process with partner clouds
• Own performance qualification of SalesforceDB releases, and deliver a record of successful performance capabilities across release qualification, production performance, capacity management, and query and systems optimization
• Lead benchmarking and modeling that guide hardware selection and capacity planning for the fleet, and the telemetry, dashboards, and analysis that show how the production fleet performs against its targets
• Hold the organization to trust standards, including scalability, service health, and the performance plans behind every release. Put proactive plans in place for systemic performance issues and technical debt
• Drive a production‑first culture of service ownership. Personally coordinate performance‑related production incident response within the cloud, and defuse cross‑cloud performance issues on behalf of the database
• Make the hard resourcing decisions that keep the portfolio on its commitments, and shift teams as business priorities move
• Stay close to teams and customers who feel database performance, and use that insight to change what we build and how we operate
• Lead a collection of teams that make up the performance portfolio. This role manages other engineering managers
• Develop talent from Manager through Director, and coach engineers from early career through principal
• Build a high‑performing, inclusive, geographically distributed organization. Motivate your teams and peer leaders. Share bad news early, solve the problems you can solve, and elevate when scope requires it
• Be the partner senior leaders in other clouds call when performance, capacity, or release risk is on the table. Build durable relationships with directors, senior directors, VPs, and the architects who support this area, and keep those architects informed and empowered

You're Our Person If…

• BS or higher degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience
• Subject‑matter expertise in the performance of large‑scale databases, storage, or distributed systems
• Proven record of owning a technology portfolio and delivering successful services or capabilities across multiple releases, on a year‑plus horizon
• 10+ years of engineering management experience, including 5+ years managing other managers, and a track record of developing both managers and senior individual contributors
• 15+ years of experience in performance engineering or software engineering on databases, storage, or distributed systems, including 5+ years leading performance, scalability, or release‑qualification teams
• Performance engineering background on systems software, ideally databases, storage, or distributed systems, with strong CS fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, concurrency, memory management) and the technical depth to engage on designs and code in Java or C/C++
• Hands‑on experience with load, benchmark, and regression testing, ideally for multi‑tenant workloads at scale, and with root cause analysis of performance and scalability problems in complex distributed systems
• Strong SQL and performance data analysis (CPU, latency, throughput, per‑tenant resource use)
• Accountability for architecture and for trust outcomes, not only for a single team's sprint
• Strong judgment on prioritization, resourcing, and when to elevate
• Excellent communication across database, storage, infrastructure, application performance, and analytics teams: you can set a vision, tell the truth about risk, and bring peer leaders with you
• Integrity, high energy, and a growth mindset: you report what the data shows, seek feedback, and keep learning, with a collaborative style

Even Better If…

• MS or PhD in databases or distributed systems
• Deep knowledge of database internals: optimizer, query execution and optimization, storage, transactions, concurrency control, memory management
• Experience with performance workloads, system benchmarks, release qualification, and production performance investigation
• Splunk or similar telemetry, dashboards, and fleet‑scale performance management
• Systems programming experience (C/C++ or Java), profiling, JVM tuning, and heap dump analysis
• SQL, Linux, data analysis and visualization, and experimental design
• Statistical analysis, benchmarking, and capacity modeling
• Operating system and network fundamentals: processes, threads, memory, file systems, storage, TCP/IP
• Cloud platforms and infrastructure (AWS, GCP), Docker, and Kubernetes
• Experience leading engineering organizations through V2MOM planning, agile delivery, service ownership, and incident response

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.

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.

We’re Salesforce, the Customer Company, inspiring the future of business with AI + Data + CRM. Leading with our core values, we help companies across every industry blaze new trails and connect with customers in a whole new way. And, we empower you to be a Trailblazer, too — driving your performance and career growth, charting new paths, and improving the state of the world.

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 $218,400 - $365,200 annually. In select cities within the San Francisco and New York City metropolitan area, the base salary range for this role is $263,200 - $401,400 annually. The range represents base salary only, and does not include company bonus, incentive for sales roles, equity or benefits, as applicable. We’re Salesforce, the Customer Company, inspiring the future of business with AI + Data + CRM.

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