Senior / Lead Software Engineer - Database/Distributed Storage Engineering

Own Company; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Time off programs

Medical benefits

Dental benefits

Vision benefits

Mental health support

Paid parental leave

Life and disability insurance

401(k)

Employee stock purchasing program

Job summary

Salesforce is seeking a Senior/Lead Software Engineer to build scalable, fault-tolerant distributed systems with a strong AI focus. You will design, implement, and test across stacks, emphasizing reliable AI-driven workflows and secure, high-quality code.

The role emphasizes advanced prompt engineering, evaluation of code quality, and mentoring within a fast-paced, collaborative environment. Senior engineers with enterprise experience are encouraged to apply.

Qualifications

• 5-9+ years of professional experience or a M.Sc. in a relevant field with 3-7+ years of experience.
• Experience designing scalable, fault-tolerant transactional and distributed systems in enterprise environments.
• Proven ability to write precise, structured prompts and maintain system context for reliable AI outputs.

Responsibilities

• Build and ship high-quality, production-grade software with AI as a core part of the development workflow.
• Design and orchestrate complex systems where AI agents integrate into human workflows at scale.
• Contribute to a shared system context repository with designs, constraints, and standards.
• Critically evaluate code (human or AI-generated) for correctness, quality, security, and performance.

Skills

AI-first

AI tools

Prompt engineering

Distributed systems

Java/C

Telemetry/metrics

Fast learner

Testing & review

Agile

Mentoring

5–9 yrs exp

Relational DBs

GCP

Education

MS in relevant field

Tools

Claude Code

GitHub Copilot

Codex

Cursor

Job description

Description

*IN SCHOOL OR GRADUATED WITHIN THE LAST 12 MONTHS? PLEASE VISIT FUTURE FORCE FOR OPPORTUNITIES*

Our Salesforce Database (SDB) team provides a highly available database for Salesforce applications. Within the large SDB team, we provide a highly durable and available distributed storage for public clouds. We are defining the next generation of trusted enterprise computing in the cloud. We're a fast-paced, metrics driven team. We're highly collaborative and work across all areas of our technology stack. We live and breathe transactional systems, distributed systems and enterprise reliability, availability and scale.

The team is seeking a highly qualified and energetic Senior/Lead Software

Engineer who will be responsible for working on development scalable, resilient and fault tolerant transactional and distributed systems. The Senior/Lead Software Engineer will be responsible both for design and hands‑on implementation. The software engineer role at Salesforce encompasses architecture, design, implementation, and testing to ensure we build products right and release them with high quality. Equally important is advanced prompt engineering - the ability to write precise, structured prompts and cultivate the system context that makes AI outputs reliable, secure, and production-ready.

Job Responsibilities:

• 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.

Required Skills:

• 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 designing, developing scalable, resilient and fault tolerant transactional and distributed systems in enterprise production environments
• Highly skilled in Java or C in a Unix/ Linux Environment, with an understanding of modern object-oriented programming techniques and design patterns
• Experience using telemetry and metrics to drive operational excellence
• Ability to learn quickly and deliver high quality code in a fast-paced, dynamic team environment
• A meticulous and detailed oriented engineer, responsible for writing one’s own functional and unit tests and help review and test teammates' code
• Familiar with Agile development methodology and committed to continual improvement of team performance
• Effective communication, strong leadership skills, team player who is capable of mentoring and being mentored by others
• Inventive and creative; on task and able to deliver incrementally and on time
• You should have 5-9+ years of professional experience, or a M.Sc. in a relevant academic field and 3-7+ years of professional experience. Experience with relational databases and or distributed storage, GCP is a big plus.
• 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

Desired Skills

• 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.

Highly Available Distributed Systems Areas where you may be working on include highly scalable, highly performant distributed systems with highly available and durable data storage capabilities that ensure high availability of the stack above that includes databases. A thorough understanding of distributed systems, system programming, working with system resources is required. Practical knowledge for challenges regarding clustering solutions, hands‑on experience in deploying your code in the public cloud environments, working knowledge of Kubernetes and working with APIs provided by various public cloud vendors to handle data are highly desired skills

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.