Lead Software Engineer, Data Platform

Lead Software Engineer, Data Platform a couple of women smiling Software Engineering California - San Francisco Washington - Seattle New York - New York Full time Posted 09 December 2025 JR319788 California Salary $200,800 - $276,100 New York Salary $200,800 - $276,100 Washington Salary $184,000 - $253,000 Description We are looking for exceptional Lead Engineers to build the engine that powers Salesforce’s enterprise intelligence. In this role, you will be a hands-on technical contributor responsible for modernizing our core data ecosystem. You will move beyond simple ETL scripts to build a robust, software-defined Data Mesh using Snowflake, dbt, Airflow, and Informatica. You will bridge the gap between "Data Engineering" and "Software Engineering"—treating data pipelines as production code, automating infrastructure with Terraform, and optimizing high-scale distributed systems to enable AI and Analytics across the enterprise. Key Responsibilities Core Platform Engineering & Architecture Build & Ship: Design and implement scalable data pipelines and transformation logic using Snowflake (SQL) and dbt. Replace legacy hardcoded scripts with modular, testable, and reusable data components. Orchestration: Engineer robust workflows in Airflow. Write custom Python operators and ensure DAGs are dynamic, factory-generated, and resilient to failure. Performance Tuning: Own the performance of your datasets. Deep dive into query profiles, optimize pruning/clustering in Snowflake, and reduce credit consumption while improving data freshness. DevOps, Reliability & Standards Infrastructure as Code: Manage the underlying platform infrastructure (warehouses, roles, storage integration) using Terraform or Helm. Click-ops is not an option. CI/CD & Quality: Enforce a strict "DataOps" culture. Ensure every PR has unit tests, schema validation, and automated deployment pipelines. Reliability (SRE): Build monitoring and alerting (Monte Carlo, Grafana, Newrelic, Splunk) to detect data anomalies before stakeholders do. Collaboration & Modernization Data Mesh Implementation: Work with domain teams (Sales, Marketing, Finance) to onboard them to the platform, helping them decentralize their data ownership while adhering to platform standards. AI Readiness: Prepare structured data for AI consumption, ensuring high-quality, governed datasets are available for LLM agents and advanced analytics models. Focus: System Design & Technical Leadership. You proactively identify problems (e.g., "Our ingestion pattern won't scale 10x") and design the architectural solution. You lead the technical direction for a squad. Scope: You own entire subsystems or domain architectures. You are the "Tech Lead" for a group of engineers, driving technical consensus, RFCs, and coordinating cross-team dependencies. What We’re Looking For Core Qualifications Engineering Roots: Strong background in software engineering (Python/Java/Go) applied to data. You are comfortable writing custom API integrations and complex Python scripts. The Modern Stack: Deep production experience with Snowflake (architecture/tuning) and dbt (Jinja/Macros/Modeling). Workflow Orchestration: Advanced proficiency with Airflow (Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow). Cloud Native: Hands-on experience with AWS services (S3, Lambda, IAM, ECS) and containerization (Docker/Kubernetes). DevOps Mindset: Experience with Git, CI/CD (GitHub Actions/Jenkins), and Terraform. Experience Requirements 8+ years of experience, with a proven track record of leading technical projects or small teams. Nice to Have Knowledge Graph Experience: Familiarity with Graph Databases (Neo4j) or Semantic Standards (RDF/SPARQL, TopQuadrant) is a strong plus as we integrate these technologies into the platform. Open Table Formats: Experience with Apache Iceberg or Delta Lake. Streaming: Experience with Kafka or Snowpipe Streaming. AI Integration: Experience using AI coding assistants (Copilot, Cursor) to accelerate development. For roles in San Francisco and Los Angeles: 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. Unleash Your Potential When you join Salesforce, you’ll be limitless in all areas of your life. Our benefits and resources support you to find balance and be your best, and our AI agents accelerate your impact so you can do your best. Together, we’ll bring the power of Agentforce to organizations of all sizes and deliver amazing experiences that customers love. Apply today to not only shape the future — but to redefine what’s possible — for yourself, for AI, and the world. At Salesforce, we strive to create an accessible and inclusive experience for all candidates. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please submit a request via this Accommodation Request Form. Please note that Salesforce uses an automated employment decision tool to help our recruiters assess and evaluate candidates’ resumes. If you do not want Salesforce to use this tool with your application, please submit a request via this form. Equal Opportunity Statement. Salesforce is an equal opportunity employer and maintains a policy of non-discrimination with all employees and applicants for employment. What does that mean exactly? It means that at Salesforce, we believe in equality for all. And we believe we can lead the path to equality in part by creating a workplace that’s inclusive, and free from discrimination. Know your rights: workplace discrimination is illegal. Any employee or potential employee will be assessed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications – without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, transgender status, age, disability, veteran or marital status, political viewpoint, or other classifications protected by law. This policy applies to current and prospective employees, no matter where they are in their Salesforce employment journey. It also applies to recruiting, hiring, job assignment, compensation, promotion, benefits, training, assessment of job performance, discipline, termination, and everything in between. Recruiting, hiring, and promotion decisions at Salesforce are fair and based on merit. The same goes for compensation, benefits, promotions, transfers, reduction in workforce, recall, training, and education. Salesforce welcomes all. In the United States, compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, job level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. 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.

Salary : $184,000 - $253,000