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About This Role
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Job Category
Software Engineering
Job Details
About Salesforce
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.
Ready to level-up your career at the company leading workforce transformation in the agentic era? You’re in the right place! Agentforce is the future of AI, and you are the future of Salesforce.
Overview of the Role
We are seeking a Director of Engineering to lead our AI Agent Evaluation and Experimentation Platform team. In this role, you'll own the end-to-end evaluation and experimentation lifecycle for both agentic systems and traditional ML models. You'll be part of Salesforce's AI Engineering organization, working at the forefront of the agentic era as we build Agentforce—the future of AI-powered CRM. Your team will be responsible for building the critical infrastructure that ensures we ship high-quality, safe, and performant AI systems with confidence.
Responsibilities
- Define and execute the technical vision for evaluation and experimentation across AI agents and traditional ML models
- Own offline evaluation, regression testing, scenario-based simulations, and multi-turn agent testing infrastructure
- Build automated evaluation systems including LLM-as-Judge, rule-based scoring, and hybrid evaluation approaches
- Design and operate online evaluation, observability, and continuous performance monitoring for agent behavior
- Lead development of self-service evaluation and experimentation tooling for agent workflows, tool use, memory, and planning
- Support experimentation for both real-time agents and batch or online traditional ML models
- Integrate evaluation and experimentation pipelines into CI/CD workflows and release quality gates
- Drive adoption of evaluation and experimentation best practices across engineering and AI teams
- Set technical direction, review designs, and raise the bar on engineering quality
- Lead and develop a senior engineering team, fostering innovation and excellence
- Partner with AI research, product, security, and Responsible AI teams on evaluation and experimentation strategy
Through this role, you'll gain deep experience building large-scale AI infrastructure, shape the future of how Salesforce evaluates and ships AI systems, and make a direct impact on the quality and reliability of AI products used by millions of customers worldwide.
Required Qualifications
- A related technical degree required
- 10+ years of engineering experience, with 5+ years leading AI/ML teams
- Proven ability to lead senior engineers and engineering managers
- Experience building and operating experimentation platforms for AI systems or ML products
- Strong understanding of LLM-based agentic architectures and traditional ML systems
- Experience designing experimentation frameworks for online and offline ML workflows
- Experience building evaluation systems for models and agents, including offline tests, regression suites, online monitoring, and LLM-as-a-Judge-style approaches
- Strong background in AI agents and LLM systems, including tool use, multi-step workflows, RAG, prompt and policy management, and common agent failure modes
- Experience evaluating agent behavior across multi-step workflows and tool-using systems
- Hands-on experience designing evaluation frameworks for AI systems
- Experience with offline benchmarking, regression testing, and scenario-based evaluation
- Experience with automated evaluation approaches such as LLM-as-Judge and hybrid scoring systems
- Experience with online experimentation methods including A/B testing, shadow testing, and canary deployments
- Experience integrating evaluation and experimentation into CI/CD pipelines and release gating
- Experience with data pipelines, metrics systems, and observability tooling
- Strong cross-functional communication and stakeholder alignment skills
Preferred Qualifications
- A master's or Ph.D. degree in computer science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or related field
- Experience with data and ML platforms (e.g., Snowflake-centric workflows, feature stores, training pipelines)
- Experience working in high-scale production AI/ML environments
Benefits & Perks
Check out our benefits site which explains our various benefits, including wellbeing reimbursement, generous parental leave, adoption assistance, fertility benefits, and more.
Unleash Your Potential
When you join Salesforce, you’ll be limitless in all areas of your life. Our benefits and resources support you to find balance and *be your best* , and our AI agents accelerate your impact so you can *do your best* . Together, we’ll bring the power of Agentforce to organizations of all sizes and deliver amazing experiences that customers love. Apply today to not only shape the future — but to redefine what’s possible — for yourself, for AI, and the world.
Accommodations
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Posting Statement
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 status, political viewpoint, or other classifications protected by law. This policy applies to current and prospective employees, no matter where they are in their Salesforce employment journey. It also applies to recruiting, hiring, job assignment, compensation, promotion, benefits, training, assessment of job performance, discipline, termination, and everything in between. Recruiting, hiring, and promotion decisions at Salesforce are fair and based on merit. The same goes for compensation, benefits, promotions, transfers, reduction in workforce, recall, training, and education.
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.At Salesforce, we believe in equitable compensation practices that reflect the dynamic nature of labor markets across various regions.

The typical base salary range for this position is $237,700 - $344,700 annually. In select cities within the San Francisco and New York City metropolitan area, the base salary range for this role is $237,700 - $344,700 annually.

The range represents base salary only, and does not include company bonus, incentive for sales roles, equity or benefits, as applicable.
Salary Context
This $237K-$344K range is above the 75th percentile for AI/ML Engineer roles in our dataset (median: $170K across 1414 roles with salary data).
View full AI/ML Engineer salary data →Role Details
About This Role
AI/ML Engineers build and deploy machine learning models in production. They work across the full ML lifecycle: data pipelines, model training, evaluation, and serving infrastructure. The role has evolved significantly over the past two years. Where ML Engineers once spent most of their time on model architecture, the job now tilts heavily toward inference optimization, cost management, and integrating LLM capabilities into existing systems. Companies want engineers who can ship production systems, and the experimenter-only role is fading fast.
Day-to-day, you're writing training pipelines, debugging data quality issues, setting up evaluation frameworks, and figuring out why your model performs differently in staging than it did on your dev set. The best ML engineers are obsessive about reproducibility and measurement. They instrument everything. They know that a model is only as good as the data feeding it and the infrastructure serving it.
Across the 26,159 AI roles we're tracking, AI/ML Engineer positions make up 91% of the market. At Salesforce, this role fits into their broader AI and engineering organization.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
What the Work Looks Like
A typical week might include: debugging a data pipeline that's silently dropping 3% of training examples, running A/B tests on a new model version, writing documentation for a feature flag system that lets you roll back model deployments, and reviewing a junior engineer's PR for a new evaluation metric. Meetings tend to be cross-functional since ML touches product, engineering, and data teams.
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
Skills Required
Python and PyTorch dominate the requirements. Most roles expect experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and familiarity with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or JAX. RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) has become a top-3 skill requirement as companies integrate LLMs into their products. Docker and Kubernetes show up in about a third of postings, reflecting the production focus of the role.
Beyond the core stack, employers increasingly want experience with experiment tracking tools (MLflow, Weights & Biases), feature stores, and vector databases. Fine-tuning experience is valuable but less common than you'd think from reading Twitter. Most production LLM work is RAG and prompt engineering, not fine-tuning. If you have both, you're in a strong position.
Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
Compensation Benchmarks
AI/ML Engineer roles pay a median of $210,000 based on 1,345 positions with disclosed compensation. Director-level AI roles across all categories have a median of $255,600. This role's midpoint ($291K) sits 39% above the category median. Disclosed range: $237K to $344K.
Across all AI roles, the market median is $220,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $260,000. The 90th percentile reaches $311,800. For comparison, the highest-paying categories include Research Scientist ($260,000) and AI Architect ($251,680). By seniority level: Entry: $125,000; Mid: $202,000; Senior: $240,000; Director: $255,600; VP: $225,000.
Salesforce AI Hiring
Salesforce has 7 open AI roles right now. They're hiring across AI/ML Engineer. Positions span New York, NY, US, San Francisco, CA, US, Palo Alto, CA, US. Compensation range: $223K - $401K.
Location Context
AI roles in New York pay a median of $223,400 across 228 tracked positions.
Career Path
Common paths into AI/ML Engineer roles include Data Scientist, Software Engineer, Research Engineer.
From here, career progression typically leads toward ML Architect, AI Engineering Manager, Principal ML Engineer.
The fastest path into ML engineering is through software engineering with a self-directed ML education. A CS degree helps, but production engineering skills matter more than academic credentials. Build something that works, deploy it, and measure it. That portfolio project is worth more than a Coursera certificate. For career growth, the fork comes around the senior level: go deep on technical complexity (staff/principal track) or move into managing ML teams.
What to Expect in Interviews
Expect system design questions around ML pipelines: how you'd build a training pipeline for a specific use case, handle data drift, or design A/B testing infrastructure for model deployments. Coding rounds typically involve Python, with emphasis on data manipulation (pandas, numpy) and algorithm implementation. Take-home assignments often ask you to build an end-to-end ML pipeline from raw data to deployed model.
When evaluating opportunities: Companies that are serious about AI/ML hiring tend to post specific infrastructure details in the job description: the frameworks they use, their model serving stack, their data pipeline tools. Vague postings that just say 'ML experience required' without specifics are often companies that haven't figured out what they need yet.
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 $220,000. Top-quartile compensation starts at $260,000. The 90th percentile reaches $311,800. Highest-paying categories: Research Scientist ($260,000 median, 48 roles); AI Architect ($251,680 median, 9 roles); Research Engineer ($250,200 median, 8 roles).
Demand for AI/ML Engineers has been strong and consistent. Unlike some AI roles that spike with hype cycles, ML engineering is a foundational need. Every company deploying AI models needs people who can keep them running, and the gap between research prototypes and production systems keeps growing.
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 $220,000. Top-quartile roles start at $260,000, and the 90th percentile reaches $311,800. 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. Research Scientist roles lead at $260,000 median, while AI/ML Engineer roles sit at $210,000. 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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