Description
The Lead/Principal Performance Engineer is a high-level technical leader and you are a performance and scale subject matter expert who drives innovation, designs high-scale automation frameworks, and ensures product reliability. You prevent bottlenecks before they happen through architectural influence, database tuning, and deep root cause analysis. You bring a multiplier effect to every team you join — elevating engineers around you and owning the most complex, systemic performance challenges from initial design through production. This role follows a hybrid schedule of 1-3 days per week in office.
What You'll Actually Be Doing
- Lead performance efforts across multi-team projects by designing traffic models, establishing scale goals, and implementing sophisticated automation and monitoring strategies.
- Serve as the expert in database tuning and system optimization, driving design meetings by questioning implementation choices and proposing high-performance alternatives.
- Rapidly build proofs of concept and lead research spikes to test ideas and address critical scale issues through rapid prototyping and fast iteration.
- Coach and mentor engineers at all levels, lead code and design reviews, and partner with product managers to ensure performance is a core part of the definition of done.
You're Our Person If...
- 10+ years of experience as a software engineer or developer building platforms and applications at massive scale, including hands-on automation development.
- Expert-level proficiency in Java, including Java Virtual Machine (JVM) performance tuning and Garbage Collection (GC) mechanisms, along with experience in Python, C, or Ruby on Rails.
- Deep understanding of key performance metrics across throughput, latency, memory, central processing unit (CPU), disk, and network — with the ability to debug and resolve bottlenecks across all of them.
- Strong communicator with a proven track record in Application Programming Interface (API) design, concurrency, resource efficiency, and the ability to present technical findings clearly to both engineers and executives.
Even Better If...
- Professional experience applying AI tools in automation or performance engineering contexts.
- Familiarity with distributed data and transport systems such as Apache Kafka, Apache Cassandra, or Apache Spark.
- Salesforce platform experience or Salesforce certifications.
- A related technical degree.
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.
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.