AI Engineer, Agent Systems

Location: California - Palo Alto, California - San Francisco

Remote Type: Office Tech-Flexible

Time Type: Full time

Job Description

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.

We are seeking a Lead AI Engineer, Agent Systems to join the Salesforce AI Research Incubation Team.
In this role, you will design and build production-grade AI agent systems that translate cutting-edge research into scalable, reliable platform capabilities.
You will work closely with AI researchers, platform engineers, and product teams to develop agent orchestration frameworks, tool integration, and runtime control systems. This role focuses on system-level intelligence, not on inventing new models, but on making AI agents robust, observable, and controllable in real-world environments.
This is a lead-level individual contributor role with strong technical ownership and cross-team influence.

Key Responsibilities
- Design and build AI agent systems, including agent lifecycle management, orchestration, and execution control.
- Develop scalable pipelines for tool invocation, agent planning, memory, and state management.
- Collaborate with AI researchers to operationalize research outputs into reliable agent behaviors.
- Define and enforce best practices for agent reliability, safety, observability, and cost control.
- Lead the design of APIs and services supporting agent runtime and coordination.
- Drive architectural decisions for agent frameworks and integrations across AI services.
- Troubleshoot complex system-level issues involving agent behavior, performance, or failure modes.
- Mentor engineers and provide technical leadership within the AI engineering organization.

Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.
- 5+ years of experience in backend or distributed systems engineering, with increasing technical ownership.
- Strong proficiency in Python, with experience designing complex backend services.
- Experience building production systems involving LLMs, AI services, or agent-like workflows.
- Deep understanding of RESTful APIs, service-oriented architectures, and system scalability.
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP) and containerized environments (Docker, Kubernetes).
- Strong debugging skills across distributed systems, including logs, traces, and metrics.
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to collaborate across research and engineering teams.

Preferred Qualifications
- Hands-on experience with AI agent frameworks, workflow engines, or orchestration systems.
- Familiarity with RAG systems, vector databases, or memory architectures.
- Experience implementing safety guardrails, policy enforcement, or AI observability.
- Exposure to event-driven architectures and message queues (Kafka, RabbitMQ).
- Prior experience in a research-adjacent or incubation environment.

Why Join Us?
- Build next-generation AI agent systems in collaboration with world-class AI researchers.
- Own core agent infrastructure that directly shapes how AI is used across products.
- Work on complex, high-impact systems at the frontier of applied AI.
- Competitive compensation, benefits, and strong career growth opportunities.

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

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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.