Level

Salesforce

Staff Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure

Salesforce is hiring a Staff Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure in San Francisco, United States. It pays $197k-$314k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Salesforce.

Level's read on this job

  • Level rates this software engineer role Works on AI ●●●○: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
  • Pay on this posting starts 17% higher than the typical software engineer posting on Level.
  • The posting mentions AI agents, distributed systems and data engineering among its tools and skills.
  • Level classes it as a senior role.
  • Salesforce has 1,500+ other open roles on Level.

AI in this role

Build and scale secure, reliable data infrastructure and compute platforms with an AI-forward approach supporting Slack's data ecosystem.

ai-agentsdistributed-systemsdata-engineeringinfrastructureorchestration

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.

Slack is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join the Data Infrastructure team within the broader Data Engineering organization. The mission of our team is to build secure, reliable, performant, scalable, and cost-efficient infrastructure with an AI-forward approach that powers Slack’s data ecosystem. We design and operate the core data platforms that enable data engineers, analysts, and machine learning practitioners to deliver trusted insights and data products across Slack.


Our systems power critical workflows — from batch and streaming ingestion to real-time analytics and orchestration. We’re looking for strong technical leaders who can combine hands-on expertise with strategic impact and mentorship-driven leadership to scale, and evolve the backbone of Slack’s data infrastructure.


You’ll play a key role in the design, development, and operation of services that underpin data ingestion, transformation, storage, compute and orchestration at a massive scale. As a Staff Engineer, you’ll be a Directly Responsible Individual (DRI) for multiple core data services, accountable for uptime, reliability, and performance, and a subject matter expert (SME) across multiple systems. Here are a few examples of what we work on:


  • Scaling our compute and orchestration layer with an AI-forward and data driven approach.
  • Enabling more realtime OLAP capabilities for internal and external customers
  • Creating and scaling agents, AI skills, and automation to enable engineers and users on their workflow and data needs
  • What you will be doing
  • Design, build, and operate reliable and scalable data infrastructure powering Slack’s analytics, ML, and data-driven decision-making.
  • Serve as DRI for multiple core data services specifically on our analytics infrastructure (e.g. Pinot, and Trino), ensuring uptime, reliability, and our compute and orchestration services (e.g., Airflow, Spark on Kubernetes, EMR, Hive Metastore).
  • Drive improvements in security, cost efficiency, and developer experience across our data infrastructure.
  • Build automation and self-service tools that empower our team and other data teams to easily adopt and manage data workflows.
  • Collaborate closely with data engineering, platform, and security teams to design scalable, well-governed solutions.
  • Build and enhance our observability, monitoring, and alerting on our services via Grafana and related tooling.
  • Partner with other staff and senior engineers to define best practices, technical standards, and support models for Slack’s data ecosystem.
  • Mentor and coach other engineers, modeling ownership, collaboration, and operational excellence.

What you should have

  • 10+ years of software, platform, or infrastructure engineering experience, including time spent supporting data-intensive systems or data platforms.
  • First-class communication skills and the ability to collaborate across cross-functional teams.
  • Proven experience in building, deploying, and operating distributed infrastructure at scale.
  • Strong technical background with big data and infrastructure technologies — such as EMR, Airflow, Pinot, Trino, Hive Metastore, Kubernetes, or equivalent systems.
  • Proficiency in Python, Golang, Bash, and SQL.
  • Proficiency with CI/CD (GitHub Actions), Vault, Terraform, Chef, and Grafana.
  • Deep understanding of infrastructure reliability, observability, and cost efficiency principles.
  • Hands-on experience supporting data pipelines or data engineering workflows is a strong plus.
  • A strong sense of ownership and a drive to deliver high-impact, autonomous results.
  • Hands-on experience building, managing, and integrating agentic workflows, custom AI skills, automated software factory pipelines, MCP
  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

What we value

Slack has a positive, diverse, and supportive culture—we look for people who are curious, inventive, and collaborative. We seek engineers who care deeply about craftsmanship, reliability, and empowering others. In our work together, we strive to be smart, humble, hardworking, and—above all—collaborative.

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 $197,300 - $313,700 annually. In select cities within the San Francisco and New York City metropolitan area, the base salary range for this role is $237,700 - $344,700 annually. 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

Staff Software Engineer, Data Infrastructure at Salesforce rates 60 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.

  1. ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
  2. ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
  3. ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
  4. ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

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

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

AI agentsDistributed SystemsData EngineeringInfrastructureOrchestration

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

Pay

This job starts at
$197k
Typical software engineer job
$168k

This posting starts 17% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

  1. How do you decide when an AI agent can act on its own versus asking for approval first?
  2. Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
  3. Tell me about a project where data engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
  4. Tell me about a project where infrastructure was part of your work. What did you do?
  5. Tell me about a project where orchestration was part of your work. What did you do?

Adapt your resume

  • List these exact terms on your resume: AI agents, Distributed Systems, Data Engineering, Infrastructure, and Orchestration. 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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