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About This Role
Description
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Overview of the Role
Join an agile team with deep startup roots. We operate as a high\-velocity 'startup\-within\-Salesforce,' following our recent acquisition. You’ll be managed by the same founders and engineers who built the original company, offering the autonomy of a small team backed by the global scale and trust of Salesforce. You will have the unique opportunity to build a '0 to 1' product with the founding team, while leveraging Salesforce's world\-class Data Cloud and security infrastructure to drive immediate global impact at scale.
Global supply chains still rely on slow, manual processes—email, spreadsheets, and fragmented data. The economy moves fast but supply chains don’t, creating an inefficiency that affects the $13T of goods shipped annually and is one of the largest untapped opportunities in modern enterprise.
Agentforce for Supply Chain is reimagining the supply chain with an AI\-powered platform for designing, automating, and running end\-to\-end business processes, with seamless collaboration through familiar channels like email. For Salesforce, this represents a massive growth opportunity in the back office, with innovations that flow into the front office. Customers are clamoring for more, rapidly expanding their use cases as we enter an exhilarating growth phase. As one user put it: *“I’ve been waiting for this for 20 years.”*
### What You’ll Do
As a Senior/Lead AI Software Engineer, for the Agentforce Supply Chain \- Agent Team, you will drive the ongoing development of our agents. These agents complete complex tasks requiring specific outputs reliably. They plan their work ahead of time and execute on that plan in order to drive consistency, correctness, and automation.
Drive Agent Development \& Architecture
- Lead development of intelligent agents that complete complex supply chain tasks with reliability and consistency
- Spearhead architectural decisions for distributed systems serving millions of users with 24/7 availability
- Design and implement planning systems that enable agents to execute multi\-step workflows autonomously
Lead Technical Strategy
- Partner with Product Management and Executive Leadership to translate business vision into multi\-year technical roadmaps
- Guide technical decision\-making for AI model deployment, safety constraints, and reliability frameworks
- Drive adoption of enterprise\-grade observability tools and cloud infrastructure best practices
Mentor \& Collaborate
- Mentor engineers to improve code quality, AI/ML practices, and system design
- Collaborate with cross\-functional teams including Design, Product Management, and industry experts to build high\-quality product features
- Take on new challenges and responsibilities as needed, and be an enthusiastic team player in a dynamic environment
- Engage directly with customers to gather insights and validate technical approaches
- Participate in hiring decisions and contribute to our culture of continuous learning
### Requirements
- B.S. in Computer Science with coursework in Artificial Intelligence (M.S. preferred)
- 5\+ years (7\-12 for Lead, 4\-8 for Senior) of industry experience in Software Engineering, with a focus in AI/ML
- Proficiency in multiple programming languages such as Python, Go, Java, or C\+\+
- Strong background in APIs, data modeling, and databases
- Proficient with modern AI orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex) and production\-grade serving libraries like vLLM or Hugging Face TGI.
- Demonstrated ability to work both independently and collaboratively in a dynamic environment
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Passion for continuous learning and development in AI technologies, and enthusiasm for mentoring peers
- A proven collaborator who can manage stakeholders and drive consensus across diverse engineering and product teams.
- Experience with enterprise\-grade observability tools (e.g., Splunk) and cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP).
For roles in San Francisco and Los Angeles: 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.
Role Details
About This Role
AI Software Engineers build the applications and systems that AI models run inside. They own the API layers, data pipelines, frontend integrations, and infrastructure that turn a model into a product users interact with. Every AI company needs engineers who can build the software around the AI.
The challenge is building reliable systems around inherently unreliable components. Models are probabilistic. They'll give different answers to the same question. They hallucinate. They're slow. They're expensive. Your job is to build an application layer that handles all of this gracefully while delivering a product that users trust and enjoy.
Across the 26,159 AI roles we're tracking, AI Software Engineer positions make up 2% of the market. At Informatica, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
AI Software Engineer roles are among the most numerous in the AI job market. Every company deploying AI needs software engineers who understand AI integration patterns. The demand is broad, spanning startups to enterprises, across every industry adopting AI capabilities.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week includes: building API endpoints that serve model inference with caching and fallback logic, designing the data pipeline that feeds context to a RAG system, implementing streaming responses in the frontend, debugging a race condition in the async inference pipeline, and optimizing database queries for the vector search layer. It's full-stack engineering with AI at the center.
AI Software Engineer roles are among the most numerous in the AI job market. Every company deploying AI needs software engineers who understand AI integration patterns. The demand is broad, spanning startups to enterprises, across every industry adopting AI capabilities.
Skills Required
Full-stack engineering skills with AI integration experience. Python and TypeScript are the most common requirements. You'll need to understand API design, database architecture, and how to build reliable systems around probabilistic outputs. Experience with streaming, async processing, and caching patterns is increasingly important as real-time AI applications proliferate.
Knowledge of vector databases, embedding APIs, and LLM integration patterns (function calling, structured outputs, retry logic) differentiates AI software engineers from general software engineers. Understanding cost optimization (caching strategies, model routing, batched inference) is valuable since inference costs can dominate application economics.
Strong postings describe the product you'll be building, the AI integration patterns you'll work with, and the scale requirements. Look for companies that have existing AI features and need engineers to improve and expand them, not companies that are 'planning to add AI' someday.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI Software Engineer roles pay a median of $235,100 based on 665 positions with disclosed compensation. Senior-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $227,400.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $184,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $244,000. The 90th percentile reaches $309,400. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include AI Engineering Manager ($293,500) and AI Architect ($292,900). By seniority level: Entry: $76,880; Mid: $131,300; Senior: $227,400; Director: $244,288; VP: $234,620.
Informatica AI Hiring
Informatica has 39 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI Product Manager, AI/ML Engineer, AI Architect, AI Software Engineer. Positions span IN, US, CA, US, TX, US.
Location Context
Across all AI roles, 7% (1,863 positions) offer remote work, while 24,200 require on-site attendance. Top AI hiring metros: Los Angeles (1,695 roles, $178,000 median); New York (1,670 roles, $200,000 median); San Francisco (1,059 roles, $244,000 median).
Career Path
Common paths into AI Software Engineer roles include Software Engineer, Full-Stack Developer, Backend Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward Staff Engineer, AI Architect, Engineering Manager.
If you're a software engineer, you're already 80% there. Learn the AI integration patterns: RAG, streaming inference, function calling, structured outputs. Build a project that demonstrates you can wrap an AI model in a production-quality application with proper error handling, caching, and user experience. That's the portfolio piece that gets you hired.
What to Expect in Interviews
Technical screens look like standard software engineering interviews with an AI twist. Expect system design questions about building reliable applications around probabilistic models: handling streaming responses, implementing retry logic for API failures, and designing caching strategies for LLM outputs. Coding rounds test standard algorithms plus practical integration patterns like async processing and rate limiting.
When evaluating opportunities: Strong postings describe the product you'll be building, the AI integration patterns you'll work with, and the scale requirements. Look for companies that have existing AI features and need engineers to improve and expand them, not companies that are 'planning to add AI' someday.
AI Hiring Overview
The AI job market has 26,159 open positions tracked in our dataset. By seniority: 2,416 entry-level, 16,247 mid-level, 5,153 senior, and 2,343 leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level). Remote roles make up 7% of the market (1,863 positions). The remaining 24,200 roles require on-site or hybrid attendance.
The market median for AI roles is $184,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $244,000. The 90th percentile reaches $309,400. Highest-paying categories: AI Engineering Manager ($293,500 median, 28 roles); AI Architect ($292,900 median, 108 roles); AI Safety ($274,200 median, 19 roles).
AI Software Engineer roles are among the most numerous in the AI job market. Every company deploying AI needs software engineers who understand AI integration patterns. The demand is broad, spanning startups to enterprises, across every industry adopting AI capabilities.
The AI Job Market Today
The AI job market spans 26,159 open positions across 15 role categories. The largest categories by volume: AI/ML Engineer (23,752), AI Software Engineer (598), AI Product Manager (594). These three account for the majority of open positions, though smaller categories often have higher per-role compensation because of specialized skill requirements.
The seniority mix tells a story about where AI teams are in their maturity. Entry-level roles (2,416) are outnumbered by mid-level (16,247) and senior (5,153) positions, reflecting that most companies are past the 'build a team from scratch' phase and need experienced engineers who can ship production systems. Leadership roles (Director, VP, C-Level) total 2,343 positions, representing the bottleneck between technical execution and organizational strategy.
Remote work availability sits at 7% of all AI roles (1,863 positions), with 24,200 requiring on-site or hybrid attendance. The remote share has stabilized after the post-pandemic correction. Senior and specialized roles (Research Scientist, ML Architect) are more likely to be remote-eligible than entry-level positions, partly because experienced hires have more negotiating power and partly because these roles require less hands-on mentorship.
AI compensation is structured in clear tiers. The market median sits at $184,000. Top-quartile roles start at $244,000, and the 90th percentile reaches $309,400. These figures include base salary with disclosed compensation. Total compensation (including equity, bonuses, and sign-on) runs 20-40% higher at companies that offer those components.
Category matters for compensation. AI Engineering Manager roles lead at $293,500 median, while Prompt Engineer roles sit at $122,200. The spread between highest and lowest-paying categories reflects the premium on specialized technical skills versus broader analytical roles.
The most in-demand skills across all AI postings: Rag (16,749 postings), Aws (8,932 postings), Rust (7,660 postings), Python (3,815 postings), Azure (2,678 postings), Gcp (2,247 postings), Prompt Engineering (1,469 postings), Openai (1,269 postings). Python dominates, appearing in the vast majority of role descriptions regardless of category. Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, Azure) is the second most common requirement. The newer entrants to the top skills list (RAG, vector databases, LLM APIs) reflect the shift from traditional ML toward generative AI applications.
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