VP - Database Engineering

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Job Category

Software Engineering

Job Details

About Salesforce

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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 Database Engineering builds and operates the cloud-native database platform that supports all core Salesforce traffic, forming the foundation of customer trust, availability, and scale across the Salesforce ecosystem.
As Vice President of Salesforce Database Engineering, you will lead the organization responsible for evolving this mission-critical database platform as Salesforce expands across public cloud providers through HyperForce. You will define the long-term vision and drive execution for a globally distributed, multi-tenant database system that powers Salesforce applications for tens of millions of users worldwide. You will have the unique opportunity to work at the forefront of AI, cloud computing and infrastructure and contribute to enabling a full suite of Salesforce applications.
This role requires a seasoned engineering leader with deep expertise in distributed systems and database technologies, proven experience operating large-scale cloud services, and the ability to build and lead geographically distributed engineering organizations. You will work closely with Public Cloud, HyperForce, Product Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering, and Infrastructure leaders to ensure Salesforce’s database layer remains highly reliable, performant, secure, and cost-efficient as the platform evolves.
Key Responsibilities:
Strategy & Vision
Define and own the long-term technical and organizational vision for Salesforce’s cloud-native database platform.

Partner with Public Cloud and HyperForce leadership to enable Salesforce’s unified platform and applications across public clouds, including GCP.

Set the roadmap for scalability, performance, durability, availability, and cost efficiency to support Salesforce’s current and future workloads.

Engineering & Architecture Leadership
Lead the design, development, and evolution of a globally distributed, multi-tenant database system supporting all core Salesforce traffic.

Drive architectural decisions across storage, replication, consistency models, failover, disaster recovery, and data durability.

Collaborate closely with architects and product owners to build best-in-class database services and systems at scale.

Ensure strong engineering fundamentals, including modular design, correct abstractions, automated testing, and continuous integration.

Operational Excellence
Own SLAs for availability, latency, and durability of Salesforce’s database infrastructure.

Lead database-related incident management for Sev-0 and Sev-1 events, including prevention, response, and post-incident learning.

Champion automation, observability, and operational rigor to safely operate services at extreme scale.

Execution & Delivery
Drive execution by working across cross-functional teams spanning database engineering, public cloud infrastructure, HyperForce, SRE, and product engineering.

Balance long-term architectural investments with short-term delivery commitments.

Make critical technical and organizational decisions, innovating aggressively while managing operational risk.

People & Organizational Leadership
Hire, build, and scale a world-class, geographically distributed engineering organization.

Mentor and grow senior engineers, architects, managers, and managers-of-managers.

Establish clear expectations for technical leadership, ownership, and accountability.

Foster an inclusive, high-performance culture with a strong emphasis on diversity and engineering excellence.

Cross-Functional & Executive Leadership
Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to executive leadership and stakeholders.

Represent Salesforce Database Engineering in executive planning, architecture reviews, and strategic initiatives.

Encourage ideas, bring a strong point of view, and lead through influence as well as authority.

Qualifications:
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent experience.

20+ years of overall engineering experience, with 10+ years leading large, multi-level engineering organizations.

Deep expertise in distributed systems, databases, or large-scale storage platforms.

Proven experience owning and operating cloud-based, mission-critical services at B2C scale.

Strong background in service ownership, operational excellence, and 24×7 production systems.

Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to engage both executives and deeply technical audiences.

Preferred:
Experience building or operating cloud-native, multi-tenant database platforms.

Working knowledge of public cloud technologies (GCP, AWS, Azure) and large enterprise cloud migrations.

Experience partnering with public cloud platform teams and enabling large-scale platform transitions.

Strong grounding in data structures, algorithms, and object-oriented programming.

Agile mindset with experience operating in Scrum/Agile environments

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.

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Posting Statement

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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 $282,300 - $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.