Lead Forward Deployed Engineer

Leadout Capital; South Africa; On-site; ZAR 1,800,000 - 2,800,000; Full time

Job summary

Salesforce seeks a Senior Forward Deployed Engineer to own end-to-end delivery of agentic AI solutions for strategic customers. You will architect, deploy, and mentor, embedding within customer environments and collaborating with Deployment Strategists.

You’ll design on Agentforce, manage data lifecycles, and push for practical, production-ready outcomes while staying at the frontier of AI advances. Travel ~25% will be required.

Qualifications

• 6+ years of software engineering or technical delivery experience.
• Degree in Computer Science or a related field.
• Expert in at least one of Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, or Apex.
• Experience integrating LLMs in production with LangChain or LlamaIndex.
• Deep experience in data modeling, processing, analytics with Salesforce Data 360, Snowflake, or Databricks.
• Deep Salesforce platform expertise: Agentforce, Apex, LWC, Flows, and Salesforce APIs.
• Mentored technical talent and created reusable assets and frameworks.
• Strong communication with engineering peers, customer architects, and executives.
• Willingness to travel ~25% to work with customer engineers.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end build and deployment of agentic AI solutions for Salesforce's strategic customers, from architecture to production handoff.
• Design and ship agentic systems on the Agentforce platform: agent logic, tool calls, multi-agent orchestration, guardrails, and integration patterns.
• Own the data lifecycle: model design, processing pipelines, and data readiness for AI apps across Salesforce Data 360, Snowflake, Databricks.
• Resolve blockers like data integration failures, model deployment issues, and orchestration breakdowns.
• Build and maintain agent performance dashboards and KPI reporting across engagements.
• Develop proofs-of-concept and MVPs quickly with prudent decision-making.
• Codify learnings into playbooks and reusable assets for the org.
• Mentor engineers through code reviews and pair sessions.
• Provide depth on at-risk deployments and surface field insights to Product/Engineering.
• Travel ~25% to work embedded with customer engineers.
• Partner with Deployment Strategist to translate business challenges into ship-ready agentic solutions.

Skills

End-to-end ownership

Enterprise AI

Cloud/SaaS

Python

JavaScript/TypeScript

Java

Apex

LLMs in production

Data modeling

Salesforce platform

Mentoring

Communication

Travel ~25%

Education

Computer Science degree

Tools

LangChain

LlamaIndex

Salesforce Data 360

Snowflake

Databricks

Job description

Job Description

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