Principal Data and AI Architect

Salesforce•Mclean, VA

About The Position

Salesforce is seeking a Principal Data and AI Architect for its Global Public Sector team. This role focuses on helping customers in defense, federal/civilian, state and local government, higher education, and nonprofits understand and implement AI solutions. The architect will be responsible for defining the right architecture, ensuring a trusted data foundation, establishing a clear operating model, and creating an adoption path that scales within government and public-serving institutions. The position requires working closely with customers, sales teams, and internal Salesforce departments. The ideal candidate will have a strong understanding of the public sector domain, its unique security, compliance, and procurement realities, and will be able to identify where Salesforce can provide the most leverage. This role is for individuals who enjoy solving complex problems, think in systems, and are energized by the transformation AI is driving across government and public institutions.

Requirements

7+ years experience in technical architecture, enterprise architecture, solution engineering, consulting, implementation, software engineering, product development, or related work in complex enterprise environments.
Experience in defense, federal/civilian, state, local, higher education, or nonprofit environments preferred.
A track record of shaping technical strategy with input from customers and/or stakeholders, validating solution approaches, and connecting mission or business needs to technology decisions.
Strong understanding of enterprise data, AI, integration, governance, security, privacy, and platform architecture concepts and patterns.
Familiarity with public sector compliance frameworks (e.g. FedRAMP, StateRAMP, CJIS, NIST) is a plus.
Experience working across Sales, Product, Engineering, Support, and delivery or customer teams to move solutions from idea to execution.
The ability to distill and communicate complex technical ideas to executive and technical audiences, including government and institutional stakeholders.
Demonstrated curiosity and learning velocity in emerging technologies, especially within the AI, data, automation, and agentic systems space.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Data Science, other STEM degrees or equivalent work experience.
U.S. citizenship required.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Salesforce Data 360 (Data Cloud), Agentforce, MuleSoft, Tableau, Informatica, or the broader Salesforce Platform, ideally within government or public sector deployments.
Experience with public sector-common vendors and platforms such as AWS (including AWS GovCloud), Microsoft/Azure Government, Palantir, Databricks, or Snowflake, in a pre-sales, solution engineering, or forward-deployed engineering capacity.
Conversational AI, voice-enabled AI agents, real-time voice orchestration, telephony integrations, or multi-channel service experiences.
Modern data platforms such as Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, RedShift, and the hyperscaler ecosystems around them.
AI agents, generative AI, AI governance and observability, external agent ecosystems, hyperscaler AI services, or enterprise automation.
Familiarity with public sector security and compliance requirements (e.g. FedRAMP, StateRAMP, CJIS, IL4/IL5, NIST 800-53) and identity/access frameworks common in government environments.
Programming languages such as Python, common data structures and tooling, and AI-assisted development pipelines.
Building demos, prototypes, proofs of concept, workshops, reference architectures, or field enablement assets.
Graduate study a plus.

Responsibilities

Share a clear point of view on enterprise data and AI for public sector missions, including how agents, data platforms, CRM, trust, identity, workflow, governance, security, compliance, and adoption come together to deliver value through Salesforce.
Deeply understand Salesforce data & AI products and articulate their value to defense, federal, state, local, higher education, and nonprofit stakeholders.
Partner with sellers and solution teams to uncover customers' real mission problems, shape technical strategy, and pressure-test feasibility, security posture, and cost-to-serve early.
Lead customer architectural discussions around Data 360, Agentforce, data structures and patterns, AI readiness, identity management, governance, integration, automation, compliance, and business/mission value.
Build customer confidence through demos, prototypes, proofs of concept, reference patterns, and architectural walkthroughs that demonstrate what's real as well as what it will take to operationalize and scale within public sector constraints.
Continuously scan the horizon and tinker to refine judgment on what's worth building and how to build within the public sector data and AI space.
Turn field learnings into reusable assets, enablement, best practices, and product feedback to extend impact beyond immediate teams and stakeholders.