Applied AI Architect (Principal/Lead)

Salesforce is hiring an Applied AI Architect (Principal/Lead) in New York, United States. It pays $148k-$198k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Level.

Level's read on this job

Level rates this role Works on AI ●●●○: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
Tools and skills the posting cites include Agentforce, Apis and AI agents.
Level files it as a lead role.
Level lists 1,500+ other open roles at Salesforce.
The role was posted in the last few days.

AI in this role

Design and architect enterprise AI agents, semantic layers, and capability integrations within the Salesforce ecosystem.

agentforceapis

ai-agentsarchitectureagent-orchestrationsemantic-layersai-governanceai-assisted-development

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

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.

Applications will be accepted until 01/31/2027.

About the Role

Our architect team is organized into four domains that together make the platform work for customers: Platform Advantage (why Salesforce, why now), Emerging Tech & UI Innovation (agent execution and dev tooling), Data & AI Excellence (data, semantics, and AI context), and Governance & Trust (identity, security, and audit). This req can land in any of the four, based on where your deepest expertise fits and where the team has the most need at the time of hire.

Across all four domains, the DNA is the same: you lead with the customer's business and technical problem, not a product pitch, you're fluent across Salesforce and its alternatives, and you stay engaged through execution so the work actually lands, not just the recommendation.

What You'll Do

Your day-to-day will concentrate in one or two of the following, depending on domain placement:

Agent Architecture (Platform Advantage / Governance & Trust): orchestration, agent-to-agent interaction, state and memory, guardrails, testing.
MCP & Capability Architecture (Platform Advantage / Emerging Tech): exposing business capabilities for agents to discover and act on, not just raw objects.
Data 360 & Semantic Architecture (Data & AI Excellence): unified customer data, semantic layers, and the context AI needs to be useful.
Headless & Composable Architecture (Platform Advantage / Emerging Tech): APIs, headless experiences, and composable extensions of Salesforce beyond the standard UI.
AI-Assisted Development (Emerging Tech): coding assistants, reviewing AI-generated work, dev lifecycle and quality practices.
AI Governance & Security (Governance & Trust): identity and permissions, data access, agent authority, human-in-the-loop controls, audit.

Regardless of domain, you'll also:

Work collaboratively across multiple pre and post sale teams.
Align C-suite stakeholders around a shared view of a business problem and map it to a capability someone can act on.
Help resolve platform-fit ambiguity for customers facing conflicting internal recommendations or a troubled prior rollout.
Name ambiguity and route it explicitly to the right domain rather than letting unclear work default to whoever's in the room.

What We're Looking For

Required:

5+ years in enterprise or solutions architecture, with direct experience influencing senior technical and business stakeholders.
Experience with AI tooling to build solutions, learn new skills, and be more efficient with your job.
Deep, credible expertise in at least one of the six focus areas above, deep enough to be the final word in a room, not conversational familiarity.
Fluency across the Salesforce platform or at least one major alternative / adjacent technology relevant to your focus area.
A track record of staying engaged through delivery, including recovering stalled or politically stuck work.
B.S., M.S. or PhD in Computer Science, Software Engineering or MIS

Preferred:

Working knowledge of a second focus area above, enough to know when to hand off rather than overreach.
Experience untangling a failed or stalled enterprise rollout (data, MDM, platform, or AI) for a customer.
Strong visual communication skills for architecture storytelling.

Domain Placement

Final domain assignment (Platform Advantage, Emerging Tech & UI Innovation, Data & AI Excellence, or Governance & Trust) is determined during the interview process based on demonstrated depth and current team need, not fixed at the time of posting.

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. Please see our Candidate Privacy Statement for more information about how we use your personal data and your rights, including with regard to use of AI tools and opt out options.

Posting 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.

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 $148,190 - $198,170 annually There is a different range applicable to specific work locations. In California and New York, and select cities in the metropolitan areas of Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and Washington DC, the base pay range for this role in those locations is $162,960 - $217,980 per year. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for the job location during the hiring process. The range represents base salary only, and does not include company bonus, incentive for sales roles, equity or benefits, as applicable.

How we rate this

Applied AI Architect (Principal/Lead) at Salesforce rates 75 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Open the description and count.

Key facts

Applied AI Architect (Principal/Lead) is an open job at Salesforce.
Level rates this role AI Level 3 of 4: Works on AI.
The listed salary is $148k-$198k a year.
The role is based in New York - New York.
The job was posted on October 16, 2026.
Seniority: lead.
Applications are handled by Salesforce. Apply on Salesforce

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

AI agentsArchitectureAgent OrchestrationSemantic LayersAI GovernanceAI Assisted DevelopmentAgentforceApis

Questions you could be asked

How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
Tell me about a project where architecture was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where agent orchestration was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where semantic layers was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where ai governance was part of your work. What did you do?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, Architecture, Agent Orchestration, Semantic Layers, and AI Governance. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project. This role expects it to be a running habit.

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