Missionforce - Senior/Lead Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), Public Sector

Salesforce•Herndon, VA

7d•$148,500 - $365,200•Onsite

About The Position

As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) on our Public Sector team, you'll be embedded with U.S. Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, and Aerospace clients — designing and deploying bespoke AI solutions that drive mission-critical outcomes. Additionally you'll architect the backbone of a planet-scale platform that ships hundreds of features daily with rock-solid reliability and security. This role demand a builder's mindset, an AI-first approach, and the technical depth to take complex challenges from concept to production.

Requirements

Must be a U.S. citizen (U.S. born or naturalized) living on U.S. soil who does not hold dual citizenship with the ability to meet customer and government screening standards applicable to this role.
8+ years of hands-on software engineering experience
Deep proficiency in Java, GoLang, Python, or Ruby
A demonstrated, genuine AI-first approach to engineering — using AI to move faster, build fluency across the stack, and contribute well beyond your core specialty.
Experience using AI tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Codex, Cursor, etc.) in development workflows.
Advanced prompt engineering skills and the ability to write precise, structured prompts and cultivate the system context that makes AI outputs reliable, secure, and production-ready.
Experience with enterprise data platforms (Salesforce Data Cloud, Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery)
Experience working in an air-gapped GovCloud environment
Strong collaboration and communication skills — from command centers to executive briefings
Ability to travel 25–50% of the time, as needed to customer sites.
Active Secret or Top Secret clearance required
This candidate must be a U.S. citizen (U.S. born or naturalized) who does not hold dual citizenship and agrees to complete a U.S. federal government Minimum Background Investigation (MBI) for a Moderate Public Trust position.

Nice To Haves

Background in defense/aerospace, classified environments (IL5/IL6), or federal civilian agencies
Prior experience in a customer-facing, hands-on technical lead or architect role.
Salesforce platform experience (Agentforce, Data Cloud, Flows, LWC, Apex)
Familiarity with IL5/IL6/CNSS #1253 requirements or deployment to classified environments.

Responsibilities

Serve as the technical lead on high-profile customer engagements—designing, building, and deploying tailored Salesforce solutions for defense, intelligence, and aerospace missions.
Engineer distributed systems running across thousands of compute nodes on AWS, GCP, Azure, or Alibaba Cloud
Develop Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform), microservices (Kubernetes, Docker), and data pipelines
Build and ship high-quality, production-grade software using modern engineering practices, with AI as a core part of your development workflow by pushing the boundaries of AI development tools to deliver secure, optimized, and high-quality code.
Design and orchestrate complex systems where AI agents integrate seamlessly into human workflows, driving efficiency and innovation at scale.
Contribute to building and maintaining the shared system context, an explicit repository of system designs, constraints, and standards that enables AI to operate accurately and reliably.
Critically evaluate code (human or AI-generated) for correctness, quality, security, and performance.
Partner directly with customers and mission stakeholders to translate complex needs into technical solutions
Lead rapid prototyping, root cause analysis, and best-practice evangelism across teams
Mentor junior engineers and serve as a technical role model