Lead Software Engineer- Distributed Systems — San Francisco

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. Salesforce is leading the AI and Agentic revolution as the world's #1 AI CRM — and that incredible momentum demands network infrastructure that's fast, secure, intelligent, and relentlessly reliable. Our Edge CDN team is building a high-powered backbone that seamlessly connects millions of users to our platform, powering next-generation autonomous AI agents across clouds, data centers, and continents. As our platform expands to support fully autonomous, self-healing, and self-optimizing operations with single-click deployments to tens of thousands of global nodes, we're continuously pushing the limits of global scale and performance to deliver exceptional user experiences. We are seeking a visionary, high-energy backend Java engineer to lead the design, architecture, and deployment of cutting-edge CDN services. You'll build real-time analytics and intelligent automation that enable our systems to self-heal and self-optimize in real time — ensuring complex, agentic AI-driven workflows execute seamlessly at scale. If you get energized by building ultra-resilient distributed systems, driving live-site excellence alongside rapid feature innovation, and running mission-critical multi-cloud infrastructure (GCP/AWS/Azure/Alibaba) for the AI era — we want you on our team! Some attributes of successful candidates • Proven track record of designing, developing, debugging, and operating resilient distributed systems • Eat, sleep, and breathe services. You’ll have experience balancing live-site management, feature delivery, and retirement of technical debt • Experience with managing large, complex systems in the cloud. • Resolve complex technical issues and drive innovations that improve system availability, resilience, and performance • Passionate about building autonomous, self-healing systems that optimize performance for AI-heavy traffic patterns • Capable of driving and delivering thin slices of functionality on a regular cadence with data-driven feedback loops in an agile environment • Be passionate about automation • Create, maintain and share technical documentation used by engineers and other team members Required Skills • 10+ years of hands-on, battle-tested engineering experience • Deep mastery of object-oriented programming with a strong focus on Java • Solid, reliable expertise in modern database technologies • Enthusiasm for Agile development workflows, continuous integration, and comprehensive testing • Passion for leveraging telemetry and metrics to champion operational excellence • In-depth fluency in design patterns, data structures, algorithms, and high-concurrency systems • Proven track record engineering top-tier public cloud platforms across GCP, AWS, Azure, and/or Alibaba • Hands-on expertise with cutting-edge container orchestration tools like Kubernetes, Docker, Helios, Fleet, or Mesos • Drive to own and operate mission-critical infrastructure services at scale, including monitoring, alerting, logging, and performance analytics Preferred Qualifications • Active contributions or excitement for open-source projects • Strong background in SOAP/REST APIs and clean, scalable API design • Solid grasp of core networking protocols and technologies, Nginx, Envoy, TCP/IP, DNS, TLS termination, and HTTP proxies, AWS Cloudfront, Google CDN, Cloudflare, Akamai.  • Familiarity with high-throughput big data stack tools like Spark, Kafka, and Druid • Experience streamlining robust CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins 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 $172,500 - $260,100 annually. In select cities within the San Francisco and New York City metropolitan area, the base salary range for this role is $207,800 - $285,800 annually.

The range represents base salary only, and does not include company bonus, incentive for sales roles, equity or benefits, as applicable.