Salesforce is looking to modernize, integrate, and optimize its foundational data ecosystem, and is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to serve as the technical architect responsible for this effort.
Requirements
- 10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 5 years focused on backend distributed systems or data infrastructure at scale.
- Deep Engineering Roots: You are an expert coder (Python, Java, or Go) who grew up building software.
- Architectural Expertise: Proven track record of designing large-scale data platforms.
- Core Stack Mastery: Hands-on expert-level knowledge of Snowflake (internals/clustering), dbt (macro design/Jinja), Airflow (scheduler internals), and Tableau.
- Graph Database Expertise: Deep understanding of Graph theory and implementation.
- Cloud Native Native: Mastery of AWS/GCP services (IAM, VPC, PrivateLink, S3/GCS) and container orchestration (Kubernetes/EKS).
- AI/LLM Integration: Experience implementing RAG architectures, vector databases, or integrating LLMs into data pipelines.
Responsibilities
- Architect the Roadmap: Define the long-term technical architecture for the Enterprise Data Platform.
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Evangelism: personally architect and review the Terraform/Helm configurations that define our infrastructure.
- Performance Engineering: Deep dive into the hardest performance bottlenecks. Optimize query planners, data serialization formats (Parquet/Iceberg), and distributed compute costs across Snowflake and Spark.
- AI Enablement: Design the integration patterns for AI-assisted tooling (Cursor, MCP, Copilot) within the developer workflow to step-change developer velocity.
- Graph RAG Architecture: Lead the technical design of 'Graph RAG' (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), creating the patterns that allow LLM agents to query structured Snowflake data via the Neo4j Knowledge Graph.
- Semantic Layer Design: Design the integration between the physical data layer (Snowflake) and the semantic governance layer (TopQuadrant/TopBraid EDG), ensuring ontologies are mechanically enforced rather than theoretically defined.
- Code Quality & DevOps: Set the standard for code quality. You will be expected to code, review Pull Requests, and enforce strict CI/CD pipelines (unit testing data, schema validation).
Other
- 10+ years of software engineering experience
- Ability to write clear, persuasive Request for Comments (RFCs) and architectural decision records (ADRs) that drive consensus among other architects and engineering leadership.
- Mentorship without Authority: Act as a technical mentor to Senior and Lead engineers across multiple squads.
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
- Travel requirements not specified
