Missionforce - Senior​/Lead Forward Deployed Engineer; FDE), Public Sector

About The Role

As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) on our Public Sector team, you will be embedded with U.S. Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, and Aerospace clients, designing and deploying bespoke AI solutions that drive mission‑critical outcomes. Additionally, you will architect the backbone of a planet‑scale platform that ships hundreds of features daily with rock‑solid reliability and security. This role demands a builder’s mindset, an AI‑first approach, and deep technical depth to take complex challenges from concept to production.

• Serve as the technical lead on high‑profile customer engagements—designing, building, and deploying tailored Salesforce solutions for defense, intelligence, and aerospace missions.
• Engineer distributed systems running across thousands of compute nodes on AWS, GCP, Azure, or Alibaba Cloud.
• Develop Infrastructure‑as‑Code (Terraform), microservices (Kubernetes, Docker), and data pipelines.
• Build and ship high‑quality, production‑grade software using modern engineering practices, with AI as a core part of your development workflow by pushing the boundaries of AI development tools to deliver secure, optimized, and high‑quality code.
• Design and orchestrate complex systems where AI agents integrate seamlessly into human workflows, driving efficiency and innovation at scale.
• Contribute to building and maintaining the shared system context, an explicit repository of system designs, constraints, and standards that enables AI to operate accurately and reliably.
• Critically evaluate code (human or AI‑generated) for correctness, quality, security, and performance.
• Partner directly with customers and mission stakeholders to translate complex needs into technical solutions.
• Lead rapid prototyping, root cause analysis, and best‑practice evangelism across teams.
• Mentor junior engineers and serve as a technical role model.

• 8+ years of hands‑on software engineering experience.
• Deep proficiency in Java, GoLang, Python, or Ruby.
• A demonstrated, genuine AI‑first approach to engineering—using AI to move faster, build fluency across the stack, and contribute well beyond your core specialty.
• Experience using AI tools (e.g., Claude Code, Git Hub Copilot, Codex, Cursor, etc.) in development workflows.
• Advanced prompt engineering skills and the ability to write precise, structured prompts and cultivate the system context that makes AI outputs reliable, secure, and production‑ready.
• Experience with enterprise data platforms (Salesforce Data Cloud, Snowflake, Databricks, Big Query).
• Experience working in an air‑gapped Gov Cloud environment.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills—from command centers to executive briefings.
• Ability to travel 25–50% of the time, as needed to customer sites.
• Active Secret or Top Secret clearance required.

• Background in defense/aerospace, classified environments (IL5/IL6), or federal civilian agencies.
• Prior experience in a customer‑facing, hands‑on technical lead or architect role.
• Salesforce platform experience (Agentforce, Data Cloud, Flows, LWC, Apex).
• Familiarity with IL5/IL6/CNSS #1253 requirements or deployment to classified environments.

Must be a U.S. citizen (U.S. born or naturalized) who does not hold dual citizenship and agree to complete a Minimum Background Investigation (MBI) for a Moderate Public Trust position. Candidates interested in the Hawaii location must be based in Oahu.

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…