Description
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
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
Desired Qualifications
Experience in one or more of the following is highly desirable:
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
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.