Lead Data Modeler

Salesforce•San Francisco, CA

6d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Lead Data Modeler role is part of Salesforce's Tech and Product (T&P) Data Modeling Team. This team is responsible for shaping the data model across every Salesforce product, including horizontal applications like Sales and Service, industry-specific clouds, and the Data 360 platform. The role requires serving as a trusted design authority, partnering with product managers, UX designers, architects, and software engineers to ensure all Salesforce products are backed by well-architected data models. The position involves daily use of AI tools to accelerate design and data model content creation, and contributing to the improvement of these AI capabilities. The US team collaborates with colleagues in India, requiring availability for some morning and evening overlap hours.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in relational (OLTP) data model design.
Deep understanding of relational database principles.
Track record of leading design conversations and driving designs to approval across both relational and analytical systems, spanning multiple industries.
Ability to communicate technical and functional concepts clearly to diverse audiences (engineers, architects, product managers, business stakeholders).
Comfortable in a whiteboard session and a leadership review.
Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment with short release cycles.
Ability to manage multiple products concurrently with minimal specifications.
Ability to build consensus across teams with competing priorities.
Genuine enthusiasm for using AI tools to improve job performance.
Motivation to help build AI-assisted data modeling into team operations.
A related technical degree required.

Nice To Haves

Experience across a broad range of business domains (sales, service, field service, marketing, commerce) and industries (financial services, health, manufacturing, communications, retail, public sector, and others).
Knowledge of Salesforce platform features and capabilities, including the core CRM platform and Data 360.
Knowledge of modern data stack technologies such as columnar, graph, vector, streaming databases, Apache Iceberg, Snowflake, or similar.
Good understanding of enterprise architecture principles.
Experience serving as a trusted design advisor to product and engineering teams.
Strong, hands-on knowledge of SQL (or Salesforce SOQL).
Experience with relational database performance tuning.
Working knowledge of how physical database design decisions affect query performance.

Responsibilities

Lead collaborative data model design sessions with product managers, UX designers, architects, and engineers.
Sketch logical entity-relationship models and map them into existing Salesforce data models.
Surface design risks and drive designs to approval as peer advisors.
Coach and mentor partners throughout design interactions.
Own data model design quality across assigned Salesforce Clouds and represent those designs to stakeholders.
Make and defend design decisions that balance stability, architecture, user experience, performance, speed to market, and software cost of ownership.
Leverage AI tools daily to accelerate data model discovery, design, validation, and documentation.
Actively contribute to improving Salesforce's AI data modeling capabilities.
Lead and contribute to data model documentation and collateral, including entity-relationship diagrams and reference models.