Forward Deployed Engineer

Leadout Capital; Johannesburg; On-site; ZAR 1,200,000 - 1,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Leadout Capital is seeking a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer to own end-to-end delivery of agentic AI solutions for enterprise customers. You will lead technical delivery on your team, mentor peers, and set engineering standards that scale AI deployments.

The role requires 6+ years of software engineering, a CS degree, and expertise in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, or Apex; familiarity with LangChain or LlamaIndex and data platforms like Snowflake or Databricks is a plus. Travel ~25%.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of software engineering or technical delivery experience with end-to-end ownership of scalable production systems.
• Degree in Computer Science or a related field.
• Expert in Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, or Apex; conversant in others.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end build and deployment of agentic AI solutions for Salesforce's most strategic customers — from architecture decisions through production handoff.
• Design and ship agentic systems on the Agentforce platform: agent logic, tool calls, multi-agent orchestration, and deterministic guardrails.
• Own the data lifecycle: model design, processing pipelines, and data readiness for AI applications across Salesforce Data 360, Snowflake, Databricks, and customer-specific platforms.
• Resolve data integration, model deployment, and orchestration blockers; drive performance improvements.
• Build and maintain agent performance dashboards and customer KPI reporting across engagements.
• Mentor engineers through code reviews and pair sessions; contribute reusable assets and playbooks to the org.

Skills

Python

JavaScript/TypeScript

Java

Apex

LangChain

LlamaIndex

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Snowflake

Databricks

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.

Salesforce is hiring Senior Forward Deployed Engineers — the Technical Builders, responsible for deciding that leads who design, build, and deploy the most complex agentic AI solutions directly inside enterprise customer environments. You'll lead technical delivery on your team, mentor the next wave of engineers, and set the engineering standards that define how agentic AI gets deployed at scale. Partnering closely with a Deployment Strategist (Strategic Builder - a customer-facing advisor who shapes AI strategy and drives adoption), you'll own outcomes end-to-end, from architecture decision to production. Your passion for well-crafted software that solves real problems will be supported by best-in-class AI tools and a team of talented builders around you.

The Senior Builder Experience

• Technical Ownership: Partner with a Deployment Strategist to own customer outcomes end-to-end. You're the senior technical authority in the room, ensuring deliverables meet the highest engineering standards, whether it was generated by an AI tool by a colleague or written by you directly.
• AI-Supported Engineering: Cursor, Claude, and Salesforce coding products like Vibes are embedded in your daily workflow. The conventions and patterns you develop tend to propagate through the team because other Builders look to your work as reference.
• Roadmap Influence: Your field experience routes directly to Product and Engineering. The gaps you hit and the edge cases you encounter in real life customer environments become the features they ship. Senior Forward Deployed Engineers are the most credible voice in agentic AIproduct evolution.
• Continuous Innovation: You're expected to stay at the forefront — piloting emerging AI tools, experimenting with new models and frameworks, and sharing what you learn with your team and customers.

What You'll Actually Be Building

• Own end-to-end build and deployment of agentic AI solutions for Salesforce's most strategic customers — from architecture decisions through production handoff.
• Design and ship agentic systems on the Agentforce platform: agent logic, tool calls, multi-agent orchestration, deterministic guardrails, and the integration patterns that hold up in enterprise environments. Your reference implementations become the basis for how other Builders approach similar problems.
• Own the data lifecycle: model design, processing pipelines, and data readiness for AI applications across Salesforce Data 360, Snowflake, Databricks, and customer-specific platforms.
• Resolve the technical blockers that other engineers can't — data integration failures, model deployment issues, orchestration breakdowns, performance regressions. These problems are routed to you because of your track record of solving them.
• Build and maintain agent performance dashboards and customer KPI reporting to track deployment health and business outcomes across engagements.
• Develop proofs-of-concept and MVPs quickly, with the judgment to know which decisions can be deferred and which need to be right the first time.
• Codify what you learn. The patterns, reusable assets, and internal frameworks that come out of your real customer work become the playbooks the rest of the org draws from.
• Mentor other Engineers through code reviews, pair sessions, and shared work. Most of your influence on developing engineers happens inside the same codebases you're building in.
• Provide technical depth on at-risk or strategically critical deployments when senior engineering judgment is needed.
• Surface field insights directly to Product and Engineering. The gaps and edge cases you encounter in real customer environments are some of the most valuable inputs to the Agentforce roadmap.
• Partner with the Deployment Strategist on your team to translate complex customer business challenges into agentic solutions that actually ship.

You're Our Senior Forward Deployed Engineer If…

• You have 6+ years of software engineering or technical delivery experience, with proven end-to-end ownership of scalable production systems in enterprise AI, cloud, or SaaS environments.
• You have a degree in Computer Science or a related field
• You're an expert in at least one of Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, or Apex, and conversant in the others.
• You've integrated LLMs into production, used frameworks like LangChain or LlamaIndex, and applied prompt engineering and responsible AI practices in real customer contexts.
• You have deep experience in data modeling, processing, and analytics, with demonstrable proficiency across platforms like Salesforce Data 360, Snowflake, or Databricks.
• You bring deep Salesforce platform expertise: Agentforce, Apex, LWC, Flows, and Salesforce APIs.
• You have an entrepreneurial, get-things-done mindset focused on fast, impactful delivery — and the judgment to know when "fast" is the wrong call.
• You've mentored technical talent and created reusable assets — frameworks, playbooks, internal tooling.
• You communicate clearly and credibly with engineering peers, customer architects, and executive stakeholders.
• 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're excited to travel ~25% of the time, embedded with customer engineers.

Nice-to-Haves

• Salesforce certifications (Administrator, Platform Developer I/II, Agentforce Specialist, System Architect)
• Familiarity with DevOps/CI-CD practices, observability tooling, or data governance frameworks
• Experience architecting multi-cloud, multi-system enterprise AI solutions for Global 500 customers
• Track record of influencing enterprise software product roadmaps through field engineering insight
• Open-source contributions, published technical writing, or conference presentations