Software Engineering Principal Architect

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 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.

We are building the next generation of trusted enterprise computing in the cloud. Our team is fast-paced, metrics-driven, and deeply collaborative, working across the full technology stack. We specialize in transactional systems, distributed systems, and enterprise-grade reliability, availability, and scale.

We are seeking a highly accomplished and energetic Principal Architect to lead the design and evolution of scalable, resilient, and fault-tolerant transactional and distributed systems. This is a strategic, hands-on architecture role with end-to-end ownership of the Transactional Layer Storage and Compute stack. You will be responsible for shaping and driving the architecture for metadata persistence, log persistence, data persistence, and database compute.

These systems are operated and evolved through a control plane that enforces safe change compliance and meets strict Trust SLAs, including resiliency, self-healing, autoscaling, and the seamless introduction of new substrates and features. As a Principal Architect, you will envision and drive service automation outcomes, ensuring operational excellence at enterprise scale while influencing both technical direction and engineering culture. Key Responsibilities: Design and evolve highly scalable, resilient, and fault-tolerant transactional and distributed system architectures Provide architectural leadership for transactional storage and compute, including metadata, logs, and database compute layers Drive automation and operational excellence through control-plane-driven architectures Ensure systems meet strict Trust SLAs for availability, reliability, scalability, and self-healing Collaborate across engineering, operations, and product teams to align architecture with business and platform goals Use telemetry and metrics to guide design decisions and continuous improvement Mentor senior engineers while remaining open to learning and feedback Contribute hands-on when needed, including design reviews, code reviews, and critical implementations Required Qualifications: Proven experience designing and building scalable, resilient, and fault-tolerant transactional and distributed systems in enterprise production environments Strong leadership and communication skills, with the ability to influence across teams and levels Highly inventive, pragmatic, and delivery-focused, with a track record of incremental, on-time execution Expert-level Kubernetes, Java development experience in Unix/Linux environments Deep understanding of object-oriented programming, modern design patterns, and system architecture principles Strong experience using telemetry, metrics, and observability to drive operational excellence High engineering rigor, including writing functional and unit tests and participating in peer code reviews Experience working in Agile development environments with a commitment to continuous improvement 20+ years of professional experience, or a Master’s degree in a relevant field with 12+ years of professional experience Experience with relational databases is a strong plus *LI-Y 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.

Accommodations If you need a reasonable accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please submit a request via this Accommodations Request Form . Please note that Salesforce uses artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help our recruiters assess and evaluate candidates’ resumes and qualifications throughout the recruiting process. Humans will always make any candidate selection and hiring decisions.

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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. In the United States, compensation offered will be determined by factors such as location, job level, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.

Certain roles may be eligible for incentive compensation, equity, and benefits. 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.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.

At Salesforce, we believe in equitable compensation practices that reflect the dynamic nature of labor markets across various regions. The typical base salary range for this position is $257,500 - $451,700 annually. In select cities within the San Francisco and New York City metropolitan area, the base salary range for this role is $310,200 - $496,400 annually. The range represents base salary only, and does not include company bonus, incentive for sales roles, equity or benefits, as applicable.