Software Engineering Architect, PKI & Trust Services

Salesforce; Washington; On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Salesforce, Inc. is seeking an Architect to define strategy and technical direction for trust foundation across a global PKI and cryptographic identity system.

You will lead multi-team programs, ensure high availability and security, prototype in live systems, and present proposals to executives while mentoring engineers across the organization. Experience with post-quantum cryptography, SPIFFE, and cloud platforms like AWS or GCP is highly valued.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems or infrastructure services.
• Deep expertise in distributed-systems architecture, reliability, and performance at scale.
• Hands-on experience operating mission-critical, highly available services on public cloud platforms such as AWS or GCP, including Kubernetes and service mesh.
• Security domain experience in identity and authorization, applied cryptography, or infrastructure security.
• Knowledge of PKI, X.509 certificates, mutual TLS, and key management.
• Proven leadership in aligning cross-organizational initiatives without direct authority.
• Strong communication skills with experience authoring architecture proposals for engineers and executives.
• Demonstrated AI-first approach to engineering, using AI to move faster and improve stack fluency.
• Experience using AI tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot) in development workflows.
• Related technical degree required.

Responsibilities

• Own the target architecture and multi-year strategy for certificate lifecycle, trust distribution, and cryptographic identity across workloads and AI agents, leading production execution.
• Architect highly available, globally scalable trust infrastructure with measurable SLOs and fleet-wide automated certificate renewal.
• Drive automation-first, cost-effective architecture with zero-touch lifecycle operations and zero-downtime migrations.
• Establish architectural and security standards for interfaces between the trust platform and dependent infrastructure, guiding teams through design trade-offs.
• Stay hands-on by prototyping, writing critical-path code, and validating architecture in live systems.
• Present investment and architecture proposals to senior leadership, mentor engineering leads, and scale technical expertise across the organization.

Skills

Distributed-systems architecture

Security depth

Leadership without authority

AI-first approach

Strong communication

Education

Related technical degree

Tools

AWS

GCP

Kubernetes

Service mesh

Job description

To get the best candidate experience, please consider applying for a maximum of 3 roles within 12 months to ensure you are not duplicating efforts.

Job Category

Software Engineering

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

Every service on a global, multi-cloud platform rests on one foundation: trust. The systems that issue certificates, establish workload and AI agent identity, and protect cryptographic keys let millions of services prove their identity to one another.

As an Architect, you define the strategy and technical direction for this foundation as the industry moves to shorter certificate lifetimes, fully automated lifecycle management, and post-quantum cryptography.

This is a hands-on architecture role for a distributed-systems leader with strong security depth. You design for continuous global availability, guide the evolution of our cryptography without disrupting dependent services, and implement working systems across multiple engineering teams. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and key-management expertise are strong advantages, but deep distributed-systems and security judgment matter most.

What You'll Actually Be Doing

• Own the target architecture and multi-year strategy for certificate lifecycle, trust distribution, and cryptographic identity across workloads and AI agents, and lead execution through production.
• Architect highly available, globally scalable trust infrastructure with measurable Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and fleet-wide automated certificate renewal capabilities.
• Drive automation-first, cost-effective architecture focused on zero-touch lifecycle operations, zero-downtime migrations, and data-driven build-versus-buy decisions.
• Establish architectural and security standards for the interfaces between the trust platform and dependent infrastructure, and guide teams through complex design trade-offs.
• Stay hands-on by prototyping, writing critical-path code, and validating architecture in live systems.
• Present investment and architecture proposals to senior leadership, mentor engineering leads, and scale technical expertise across the organization.

You're Our Person If...

• You have 12+ years of experience designing and operating large-scale distributed systems or infrastructure services, with a proven track record of driving multi-team technical strategy into production.
• You have deep expertise in distributed-systems architecture, reliability, and performance at scale.
• You have hands-on experience operating mission-critical, highly available services on public cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), including Kubernetes and service mesh.
• You have security domain experience in identity and authorization, applied cryptography, or infrastructure security.
• You have working knowledge of PKI, X.509 certificates, mutual Transport Layer Security (mTLS), and key management.
• You have proven leadership in aligning cross-organizational initiatives without direct authority.
• You have strong communication skills, with a track record of authoring adopted architecture proposals and presenting effectively to both engineers and executives.
• You bring 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.
• You have experience using AI tools (for example, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Codex, or Cursor) in development workflows.
• You hold a related technical degree.

Even Better If...

• You have built or operated certificate, identity, or key-management services at scale.
• You are familiar with workload identity standards (for example, Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone (SPIFFE)) and short-lived credentials.
• You know post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standards, such as Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism (ML-KEM), Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm (ML-DSA), and hybrid key exchange in TLS 1.3, as well as emerging approaches like Merkle Tree Certificates and crypto-agility design principles.
• You have contributed to technical standards bodies (for example, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the CA/Browser Forum, or the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)) or to major open-source projects.

Unleash Your Potential

When you join Salesforce, you'll be limitless in all areas of your life.