Director of Software Engineering - Data Platform

Director of Software Engineering – Data Platform

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.

The Director of Engineering for the Enterprise Data Platform will provide unified technical leadership to modernize, integrate, and optimize Salesforce's foundational enterprise data ecosystem. This platform is mission‑critical for enabling AI innovation, advanced analytics, and trusted self‑service data access at scale across the company. In this critical role, you will bridge the world of modern analytics with the cutting edge of semantic AI, manage the core data backbone using technologies such as Snowflake, dbt, Informatica, and Airflow, and simultaneously build and scale our advanced Knowledge Graph Platform (Neo4j & Top Quadrant).

Your mission is to create a seamless fabric where structured data flows effortlessly into high‑value knowledge graphs to power BI, Advanced Analytics, and Generative AI.

• Own and champion the technical vision and roadmap for the Enterprise Data Platform Foundation.
• Align platform engineering priorities with strategic company goals, particularly AI enablement, analytics modernization, and data‑driven decision‑making.
• Operationalize a data mesh architecture to promote domain‑oriented ownership, interoperability, and AI/ML enablement.
• Champion the implementation of a unified governance and operating model across a complex technology stack (Salesforce Data Cloud, Snowflake, dbt Cloud, Airflow, Informatica, Tableau, and AWS).
• Ensure every piece of infrastructure—from Snowflake RBAC roles to Neo4j clusters and Airflow workers— is defined in code (Terraform/Helm) and version controlled.

• Lead the implementation of Neo4j as a high‑performance serving layer. Design pipelines that project data from Snowflake into the Graph for connected analysis.
• Drive the adoption of Top Quadrant (Top Braid EDG) to govern business glossaries and ontologies, ensuring our graph data is semantically rich and compliant.
• Architect the "Graph RAG" capability where structured data in Snowflake and connected data in Neo4j connect to LLM agents via a unified API.

• Dev Ops Culture:
  Enforce strict software life cycles for data. Branches, pull requests, unit tests (for data and code), and automated deployments are mandatory.
• Reliability Engineering (SRE):
  Own the uptime. Implement robust monitoring, alerting, and incident response processes for the platform.
• Vendor management:
  Manage vendor relationships and strategically optimize licensing, infrastructure, and operational spending.
• Team Growth:
  Recruit and lead backend engineers, data engineers, and graph specialists. Foster a team culture that values clean code, architectural reviews, and technical fearlessness.

• Build, lead, and mentor high‑performing engineering teams across multiple disciplines.
• Cultivate a collaborative culture, fostering strong cross‑functional partnerships with Product, Security, Data Governance, and Business Units.
• Manage a diverse team of Software Engineers (Snowflake/Airflow/dbt focus), and Graph Engineers (Neo4j focus).

• 5+ years managing software engineering teams with a focus on backend or data infrastructure.
• Experienced as a Software Engineer. Comfortable reviewing Python/Java code, discussing API latency, and designing microservices.
• Proven track record of delivering scalable, secure, and cost‑optimized infrastructure solutions.
• Deep expertise in enabling AI/ML and advanced analytics through large‑scale data platform modernization.
• Hands‑on expertise with the core technology stack:
  Snowflake, dbt Cloud, Airflow, Informatica IICS, Tableau, and Salesforce Data Cloud.
• Experience with Apache Spark, Apache Iceberg, and Python for…