Principal, Specialist SE

Salesforce•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

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. We are seeking a Principal Agentforce Solution Engineer to handle our most complex, high-stakes, and strategic AI deployments. This role is for a technical architect and strategist who can navigate organizational misalignment as deftly as they navigate complex data architectures. You will be responsible for "Bridging the Gap" between pre-sales vision and post-sales reality, ensuring our largest customers are technically and organizationally ready to scale Agentforce. What is the AFSE Team? The AFSE team sets the benchmark for AI technical configuration. We are the indispensable partners in the customer journey, proactively guiding clients to ensure adoption is not just successful, but transformative. We execute specific, time-bound engagements—ranging from 2-day Hackathons to multi-week Advisory sessions—to de-risk ACV and drive New Consumption Revenue (NCR).

Requirements

Authoritative & Strategic: You can sit in a room with a CIO or Senior Architect and explain why their current roadmap will fail, and then provide the "Action Plan" to fix it.
AI Ecosystem Expert: You possess deep knowledge of the broader AI landscape (LLMs, RAG, Copilots). You understand the technical differentiators of the Salesforce Platform vs. competitors like Microsoft or AWS and can articulate our competitive advantage in data grounding and security.
Architecturally Minded: You understand the nuances of Salesforce architecture (Security, Identity, Data Cloud, Integration). You can explain the difference between a standard action and a custom dynamic retriever to a developer, and then explain the business value to a VP.
Unapologetically Action-Biased: You are not just an advisor; you are a catalyst. You drive customers toward "Technical Autonomy," ensuring they can explain the logic and construction of their build without indefinite reliance on Salesforce.
Commercial Fluency: You understand the link between technical configuration and commercial outcomes (ACV & NCR). You build solutions that drive consumption, not just functionality.

Nice To Haves

10+ years of experience in Enterprise Architecture, Technical Consulting, or Advanced Solution Engineering.
Deep mastery of Data Cloud, Agentforce, and Salesforce Platform Architecture.
Strong understanding of competitive AI platforms (e.g., Microsoft Copilot Studio, Glean, Sierra, OpenAI) and the ability to articulate technical differentiators regarding RAG, grounding, and security.
Experience managing "Red Accounts" or turning around stalled technical projects.
Strong track record of executive stakeholder management and cross-functional leadership (working with CSMs, FDEs, and Sales).

Responsibilities

Lead Technical Readiness Assessments (TRA): You will conduct deep-dive assessments for self-implementing customers, evaluating their data readiness, technical capacity, and foundational requirements. You will have the authority to identify "Not Ready" gaps and prescribe remediation action plans before a project begins.
Executive Alignment & Strategy: You will facilitate "Bridge the Gap" engagements, working with internal champions and executives to secure the sponsorship needed to move from a PoC to a firm deployment roadmap.
Complex Architectural Intervention: You will handle "Red Accounts" or high-technical-debt environments. You will design composable architecture strategies, define metered vs. unmetered permission set structures, and solve enterprise-scale data governance challenges.
Competitive Differentiation: You will validate technical capability against competitors (e.g., Glean, Sierra, Microsoft Copilot) by proving superior accuracy and hallucination control within the Salesforce trust layer.
Define Best Practices: You will harvest "Lessons Learned" from the field and codify them into reusable assets, reference architectures, and "Golden Use Case" templates that the broader SE and CSM teams can leverage.
Deal Assurance: You will deploy into high-stakes pre-sales cycles to provide the specific technical confidence needed to close large ACV deals, validating capability against competitors like Glean or Sierra.
Mentor and Scale: You will act as a technical escalation point for Senior AFSEs, helping them navigate difficult political or technical roadblocks and ensuring the quality of delivery across the team.