About The Role

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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.

Core Query Scale Engineer

About the Team

Want to work on some of the hardest database scalability and query optimization problems in the industry?

Salesforce's Core Query Services (CQS) team builds the query infrastructure that powers Salesforce's multi-tenant platform. Our systems sit on the critical path of every Salesforce application and influence 250B+ database queries every day across globally distributed infrastructure . A 1% improvement in CPU, latency, or plan quality translates into meaningful savings and better customer experience at a scale few engineering organizations ever encounter.

Operating a multi-tenant database platform at Salesforce scale presents problems that traditional relational databases were never designed to solve. The underlying database optimizer does not inherently understand Salesforce concepts such as tenant-specific schemas, sharing and visibility models, custom metadata, per-tenant data distributions, or application-level access patterns.

Our team builds the intelligence that bridges that gap — dynamic query generation, cost-based optimization, statistics and cardinality intelligence, plan management, indexing strategy, performance diagnostics, and automated detection and remediation of query regressions.

If you enjoy solving technically deep problems where small improvements have outsized impact, we'd love to talk.

What You'll Do

Design and build query infrastructure that operates safely across massive, diverse multi-tenant workloads — from architecture through implementation, rollout, and long-term operation.
Develop algorithms and systems for query generation, planning, indexing, statistics, and execution that improve performance, scalability, and resource efficiency.
Analyze production telemetry at scale to identify performance patterns, regressions, and systemic improvement opportunities — then turn those insights into durable platform features.
Build observability, diagnostics, and automation that make complex database performance problems easier to detect, understand, and resolve — including AI-assisted tooling for engineers and operators.
Ship with production discipline : feature configs, staggered rollouts, AB validation, and system monitoring. The org holds a zero-regression bar, and every engineer owns it.
Own SLA/SLO and on-call rotations for the systems you build, and investigate cross-stack production issues spanning application logic, query generation, database behavior, and infrastructure.
Partner across teams — database, runtime, platform, and application — to solve performance and scalability problems that span the stack, and contribute to the technical direction of Salesforce's next generation of query infrastructure.

Who You Are

You enjoy problems where databases, algorithms, distributed systems, and production software intersect. You dig deep into complex systems, form hypotheses from data, and design solutions that address root causes — not symptoms. You care about high-quality software and about the operational discipline required to run it safely at massive scale: reliability, observability, incremental rollout, and clear ownership.

You thrive with significant autonomy and expect to influence both technical direction and execution.

Required Qualifications

Strong software engineering experience in Java or another modern object-oriented language.
Strong understanding of relational databases and SQL, and comfort reasoning about query behavior.
Solid foundation in data structures, algorithms, and complexity analysis.
Experience designing or operating high-scale, performance-sensitive production systems.
Ability to debug complex problems across multiple layers of a software stack using metrics, profiling, telemetry, and experimentation.
Ability to design solutions that can be delivered safely and incrementally in large-scale production.
Strong written and verbal communication skills — you can explain complex technical concepts clearly and influence decisions across teams.
High ownership, quick learning, and comfort operating in a dynamic engineering environment.

Desired Qualifications

Experience in one or more of the following is highly desirable

Query optimizer internals and cost-based optimization
Indexing and physical database design
Multi-tenant SaaS platforms operating at large scale
Query plan management — hinting, plan stability, plan search

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 $117,200 - $223,900 annually. In select cities within the San Francisco and New York City metropolitan area, the base salary range for this role is $41,200 - $246,000 annually.

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