Lead Software Engineer – Identity Platform Services

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 looking for a Lead Software Engineer to provide hands-on technical leadership for Trailblazer Identity (TBID), a tier-1 B2C identity platform supporting more than 10 million users and 30+ Salesforce digital experiences and partner properties. This is a highly technical individual contributor role for an engineer who combines deep hands-on engineering experience with strong architectural judgment, technical leadership, and the ability to influence across teams. About the Role You will be part of the Platform Services team within Digital Marketing Technology and will provide technical leadership for the services that power Trailblazer Identity. You will work across multiple engineering teams and partner closely with Product, Architecture, Security, and other technology organizations to design and evolve secure, scalable, highly available identity and platform services. This role requires someone who can move comfortably between architecture and implementation: defining technical direction, evaluating trade-offs, solving complex engineering problems, mentoring engineers, and remaining close enough to the code to lead by example. Success in this role requires more than designing strong systems. You will be expected to influence technical decisions across teams, navigate ambiguity and disagreement, drive alignment with stakeholders, and raise the engineering bar for the broader platform. What You’ll Do Lead the architecture, design, and evolution of large-scale, secure, and resilient backend platform services. Provide technical leadership for services supporting Salesforce's Trailblazer Identity platform and broader digital ecosystem. Translate ambiguous product and business requirements into clear technical architectures and implementation strategies. Evaluate architectural alternatives and clearly articulate trade-offs related to scale, reliability, security, performance, operability, and development velocity. Remain hands-on with engineering and contribute directly to the design, implementation, review, and evolution of production systems. Drive technical decisions and alignment across multiple engineering teams, architects, product partners, and dependent organizations. Lead the design of APIs, distributed systems, data flows, and event-driven architectures supporting high-scale customer-facing experiences. Establish and champion engineering best practices across system design, testing, observability, operational readiness, security, CI/CD, and software quality. Identify technical risks early and drive pragmatic solutions across teams. Mentor and coach engineers while helping improve technical decision-making and engineering effectiveness across the organization. Use data, prototypes, and technical evidence to influence architectural decisions and resolve technical disagreement. Evaluate and adopt AI-assisted engineering tools and practices that improve developer productivity, software quality, and delivery velocity. What We’re Looking For We are looking for an experienced technical leader who has demonstrated the ability to operate at Lead Engineer level in complex, production-scale environments. You should have: 8+ years of professional software development experience building and operating large-scale production systems. Demonstrated experience leading the architecture and delivery of complex distributed systems or backend platforms. Strong hands-on software engineering skills and the ability to remain technically close to implementation. Strong architectural judgment, including the ability to evaluate alternatives, explain trade-offs, and make decisions across scalability, availability, reliability, security, performance, and operational complexity. Experience influencing technical direction beyond your immediate team and driving alignment across multiple engineering teams and stakeholders. Experience leading complex initiatives from architecture through implementation, testing, production readiness, and ongoing operation. Strong experience with microservices, API design, distributed systems, and cloud-native architectures. Strong experience with AWS and modern cloud architectures, including serverless and event-driven patterns. Experience designing and operating highly available customer-facing services. Strong understanding of application and web security principles. Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to communicate complex technical decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences. Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers and raise engineering standards across a team. Experience using AI-assisted development tools and workflows to improve engineering productivity and software delivery. Technical Experience Strong experience in the following areas is important for success in this role: TypeScript and JavaScript Node.js and modern backend application development AWS cloud services and serverless architectures RESTful API design Distributed systems and microservices NoSQL and relational data stores Event-driven architectures and messaging systems Infrastructure as code Automated testing and test-driven engineering practices Observability, monitoring, and operational readiness Web and application security Experience with technologies such as API Gateway, Lambda, SNS, SQS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, AppSync, Kafka, Kinesis, Terraform, Jest, and Playwright is highly relevant. Identity & Security Experience Experience building or operating consumer identity platforms is strongly valued. Relevant experience may include: B2C identity platforms such as Okta or Auth0 OAuth 2.0 OpenID Connect JWT lifecycle management Authentication and authorization patterns Identity federation Secure API design CORS, CSP, XSS prevention, and related web security practices Technical Leadership Expectations At Lead Engineer level, we expect you to: Independently drive architecture for complex systems rather than rely on others to define the technical direction. Ask the right questions before designing a solution and establish clear functional and non-functional requirements. Explain not only what you would build, but why — including alternatives considered and trade-offs made. Lead technical discussions through ambiguity and disagreement. Influence engineers and stakeholders across organizational boundaries. Balance long-term architecture with pragmatic delivery. Identify risks, challenge assumptions, and use technical evidence to drive decisions. Take ownership for outcomes, not only implementation. Improve the effectiveness of the engineers and teams around you. Communicate technical ideas with clarity, structure, and appropriate depth. Why Join the Team You will have the opportunity to provide technical leadership for a critical Salesforce identity platform supporting more than 10 million users and 30+ digital experiences and partner properties, including experiences across the broader Trailblazer ecosystem. You will work on complex challenges involving identity, distributed systems, scalability, reliability, security, and platform evolution while partnering across multiple engineering teams and organizations. This is an opportunity to have significant technical influence on a highly visible platform while remaining a hands-on engineer. 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: 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.