Principal Architect

About the role

The Experience We are seeking a Principal Software Architect who is also a hands-on, high-output software engineer. This role is for someone who has designed, built, deployed, and operated large-scale systems — and who can still personally write the software required to make complex architectures real. This is not a traditional enterprise architect position. We need a builder-architect who can move from system design to code to deployment, with deep experience in distributed systems, cloud-native platforms, API-first/headless architecture, security, enterprise integration, and AI-native software patterns.

Responsibilities

• Design and build large-scale distributed software platforms.
• Write production-quality code for core services, APIs, platform components, and reference implementations.
• Architect cloud-native systems using Kubernetes, containers, networking, load balancing, observability, CI/CD, and modern deployment patterns.
• Build secure, scalable, resilient, and observable software for enterprise-grade environments.
• Build API-first and headless platform capabilities for applications, integrations, automation, and AI agents.
• Implement security patterns for identity, authorization, API access, tenant isolation, service communication, policy enforcement, and auditability.
• Design and build AI-native and agentic system capabilities, including secure tool invocation, model integration, context management, retrieval, and workflow automation.
• Evaluate and apply open-source, commercial, cloud-native, and AI-assisted development technologies.
• Debug, optimize, harden, and scale complex systems in real production environments.

Requirements

• Extensive experience designing, building, deploying, and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Strong hands-on software engineering ability with current production coding skills.
• Experience with cloud-native platforms, SaaS products, headless/API-first systems, or enterprise platform software.
• Deep understanding of APIs, services, data flows, eventing, orchestration, caching, resilience, security, and production operations.
• Experience with Kubernetes, containers, cloud infrastructure, networking, CI/CD, observability, and deployment automation.
• Strong understanding of enterprise security and integration requirements.
• Familiarity with AI-native and agentic software patterns.
• Demonstrated ability to use modern AI-assisted development tools to increase engineering velocity.
• Ability to operate across architecture, code, infrastructure, security, deployment, and runtime behavior.

Qualifications

• You are an architect who still builds. You have delivered serious systems in production and can still write the code yourself.
• You understand distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, security, APIs, data flows, and enterprise software realities.
• You are current with modern AI-assisted engineering tools and can use them to produce high-quality systems faster without sacrificing correctness, security, or scale.

Skills

• Extensive experience in designing, building, deploying, and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Strong hands-on software engineering ability with current production coding skills.
• Experience with cloud-native platforms, SaaS products, headless/API-first systems, or enterprise platform software.
• Deep understanding of APIs, services, data flows, eventing, orchestration, caching, resilience, security, and production operations.
• Experience with Kubernetes, containers, cloud infrastructure, networking, CI/CD, observability, and deployment automation.
• Strong understanding of enterprise security and integration requirements.
• Familiarity with AI-native and agentic software patterns.
• Demonstrated ability to use modern AI-assisted development tools to increase engineering velocity.
• Ability to operate across architecture, code, infrastructure, security, deployment, and runtime behavior.

Benefits

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.

Pay

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.

Schedule

Applications will be accepted until 09/25/2026. **Please note this position can sit remotely anywhere in the United States**