Missionforce - Senior/Lead Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Public Sector

About the role

As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) on our Public Sector team, you'll be embedded with U.S. Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, and Aerospace clients—designing and deploying bespoke AI solutions that drive mission-critical outcomes. Additionally you'll architect the backbone of a planet-scale platform that ships hundreds of features daily with rock-solid reliability and security.

This role demands a builder's mindset, an AI-first approach, and the technical depth to take complex challenges from concept to production. Mission Responsibilities include serving as the technical lead on high-profile customer engagements, designing, building, and deploying tailored Salesforce solutions for defense, intelligence, and aerospace missions. You'll engineer distributed systems running across thousands of compute nodes on AWS, GCP, Azure, or Alibaba Cloud, develop Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform), microservices (Kubernetes, Docker), and data pipelines, and build and ship high-quality, production-grade software using modern engineering practices, with AI as a core part of your development workflow.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the technical lead on high-profile customer engagements—designing, building, and deploying tailored Salesforce solutions for defense, intelligence, and aerospace missions.
• Engineer distributed systems running across thousands of compute nodes on AWS, GCP, Azure, or Alibaba Cloud.
• Develop Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform), microservices (Kubernetes, Docker), and data pipelines.
• Build and ship high-quality, production-grade software using modern engineering practices, with AI as a core part of your development workflow.
• Design and orchestrate complex systems where AI agents integrate seamlessly into human workflows, driving efficiency and innovation at scale.
• Contribute to building and maintaining the shared system context, an explicit repository of system designs, constraints, and standards that enables AI to operate accurately and reliably.
• Critically evaluate code (human or AI-generated) for correctness, quality, security, and performance.
• Partner directly with customers and mission stakeholders to translate complex needs into technical solutions.
• Mentor junior engineers and serve as a technical role model.

Requirements

We’re looking for a builder, a problem solver, and a mission-first Leader with a passion for public service. The ideal candidate brings:

• 8+ years of hands-on software engineering experience.
• Deep proficiency in Java, GoLang, Python, or Ruby.
• A demonstrated, genuine AI-first approach to engineering—using AI to move faster, build fluency across the stack, and contribute well beyond your core specialty.
• Experience using AI tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Codex, Cursor, etc.) in development workflows.
• Advanced prompt engineering skills and the ability to write precise, structured prompts and cultivate the system context that makes AI outputs reliable, secure, and production-ready.
• Experience with enterprise data platforms (Salesforce Data Cloud, Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery).
• Experience working in an air-gapped GovCloud environment.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills—from command centers to executive briefings.
• Ability to travel 25–50% of the time, as needed to customer sites.
• Active Secret or Top Secret clearance required.
• Prior experience in a customer-facing, hands-on technical lead or architect role.
• Salesforce platform experience (Agentforce, Data Cloud, Flows, LWC, Apex).
• Familiarity with IL5/IL6/CNSS #1253 requirements or deployment to classified environments.

Qualifications

The candidate must be a U.S. citizen (U.S. born or naturalized) who does not hold dual citizenship and agrees to complete a U.S. federal government Minimum Background Investigation (MBI) for a Moderate Public Trust position. 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.