Sr. Director, Applied AI & Data Architect Portfolio Leader (TMT)

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Job Category

Sales

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.

About the Role

The Tech, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) Builder organization is hiring a Portfolio Leader to directly manage and grow a team of technical AI & Data forward deployed architects. This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who can drive engineering excellence while operating at the executive level. 

This is not a traditional people manager, but a mission-critical multiplier on the agentic frontier. You will lead a team of Applied AI & Data Architects (deeply technical AI & Data experts that set the technical authority across the TMT Builder organization and owns the quality of what gets built and deployed, the patterns that get reused across engagements, and the technical capability of the broader delivery organization. It includes hands-on work — building internal tools and applications, and troubleshooting directly in customer environments when needed.

Key Responsibilities

• Forward Deployed Leadership Experience

  • You own the capacity planning, talent acquisition, and staffing for the brand new Applied AI & Data Architect team within the TMT Builder organization. 

  • Your team ships solutions using a best-in-class suite of AI tools (Cursor, Claude, and Salesforce coding products like Vibes). You will foster an inclusive, high-energy, and psychologically safe engineering culture where builders iterate fast and continuously level up.

  • You stand at the center of the product feedback loop. Partner directly with the Product and Engineering organizations on pilot programs and beta rollouts, turning raw field insights from high-stakes deployments into features on the Agentforce core roadmap.

• Leadership & Team Excellence

  • Recruit, mentor, and develop the first cohort of Applied AI & Data Architects. Drive technical excellence, structure career growth, and foster an environment where shipping high-quality, production-ready systems is the norm.

  • Monitor key delivery metrics, coach your teams on optimization, and run hard on complex customer escalations. You ensure your teams move from sketch to deployable in weeks, not months.

• Internal Technical Authority 

  • Owns technical direction across Agentforce, Data 360, Slack, and adjacent platforms

  • Defines and enforces architectural standards and implementation guardrails across our customer portfolio 

  • Runs structured feedback loops — collects field signal, synthesizes patterns, and represents them in product and engineering planning

  • Leads technical research when a project needs a dedicated owner — evaluating a new capability, an architecture question, or a delivery approach

  • Sets expectations for how the team builds, documents, and shares what it learns

  • Owns tooling strategy for the Builder org

• Strategic Advisory & Technical Escalation 

  • Advises executive leadership on complex technical decisions — tooling choices, build standards, and practices that improve speed and quality in the field

  • Available for high-priority, at-risk customer situations that need senior technical judgment

  • Evaluates emerging capabilities (new Agentforce features, competitive platforms, integration patterns) and produces clear assessments

  • Partners with Product, Engineering, and Sales leaders on strategy at the intersection of product and field delivery

  • Maintains working knowledge of common use cases and technical patterns across the TMT account portfolio

• Golden Use Cases & Accelerators

  • Build and maintain a library of golden use cases and reusable accelerators — assets that let the field move faster and with less rework

  • Defines the Golden Use Case framework: what qualifies, how it's documented, how it's maintained across releases, in partnership with field and product teams

  • Builds a reusable accelerator library — templates, patterns, and deployable assets that reduce time-to-value — in partnership with the delivery team

Required Qualifications

• Proven Leadership: 4+ years of direct people management or high-impact technical leadership steering cross-functional engineering or technical teams. You have a track record of hiring, mentoring, and scaling technical talent.

• Technical Depth: 10+ years in enterprise software/SaaS with a CS, Engineering, or related background. You've built and architected real things on Agentforce or equivalent AI agent platforms — able to hold your own in a whiteboard session with a senior engineer and in a strategy conversation with a CTO

• AI/Agentic Platform Authority: Demonstrated track record deploying AI/LLM-based solutions at scale with the credibility to represent Agentforce Platform's AI vision at the executive level with customers and partners

• Enterprise Architecture: Deep expertise in data architecture, security, and integrations (APIs, SaaS platforms) — enough to guide technical strategy and hold teams to architectural standards

• Technical Fluency: Working proficiency in Python, JavaScript, Apex, or Java; engages credibly with engineers and architects directly, without intermediaries

• Executive Communication: Engages C-suite stakeholders with clarity and credibility. Writes a crisp briefing, delivers a pointed recommendation, and knows when to lead with the conclusion vs. walk through the reasoning

• Product Instinct: Turns unstructured field feedback into structured, actionable input Product teams can act on. Diagnoses systemic failure patterns — product, configuration, or data — from ambiguous signals

• Operational Intelligence: Uses product telemetry, observability data, and field intelligence to surface platform patterns, product gaps, and inform prioritization at an organizational level

• Cross-Functional Influence: Seamlessly builds trust across Sales, Solutions, Product, Engineering, Success, and Partners

• Bias for Reuse and Scale: Not satisfied solving a problem once — looks to build something the whole org can use 

• Comfort with Ambiguity: Defines things that don't exist yet and moves without perfect information

Preferred Qualifications

• Deep fluency across the applied AI concepts and technologies with preference to the Agentforce platform — with the ability to engage credibly on platform architecture, cross-cloud integration patterns, and deployment strategy at both the customer and executive level

• Prior leadership experience in a forward deployed engineering, solutions engineering, or technical advisory organization — with direct accountability for field outcomes and customer technical success ​​deploying agentic AI solutions at scale

• Familiarity with Salesforce CRM, Agentforce platform, and Data 360; fluency with adjacent enterprise platforms a strong plus

• Experience with Salesforce Flows, Lightning Web Components (LWC), and the broader Salesforce development ecosystem

• Proven ability to build thought leadership presence — through content, community engagement, or executive influence — that elevates both team credibility and Agentforce platform adoption

If you are ready to lead a team that makes AI real — not in demos, but in production, at scale, for customers that matter — we want to hear from you.

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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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.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.

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 $223,860 - $299,390 annually There is a different range applicable to specific work locations. In California and New York, and select cities in the metropolitan areas of Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and Washington DC, the base pay range for this role in those locations is $246,120 - $329,210 per year. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for the job location during the hiring process. The range represents base salary only, and does not include company bonus, incentive for sales roles, equity or benefits, as applicable.