You set direction on a year-plus horizon and you are accountable for it. You craft and deliver the V2MOM for the performance portfolio. You are a subject-matter expert in how a large distributed database behaves in production, and you build the managers and principal engineers who turn that expertise into shipped improvements. You are comfortable making hard calls on priority, resourcing, and trust, and you stand behind the outcomes.
Our performance organization partners closely with database and storage system developers, query processing engineers, application performance engineers, infrastructure engineers, and our analytics team to deliver all the pieces that add up to high performance in production at scale. Your organization's improvements ship across the whole production fleet every release, and some of our work is published at database research conferences such as CIDR. We are a high-performing team with high standards: we value integrity, rigor, and continuous learning.
What You'll Actually Be Doing
Own the SDB Performance technology line. Craft and deliver the V2MOM for that portfolio, on a planning horizon of a year or more
Set the direction for performance and scalability across the database engine, storage service, and query processing, and bring peer leadership along to see it through
Be accountable for architecture: own the architectural decisions of the performance organization, and hold a consistent architecture and design process with partner clouds
Own performance qualification of SalesforceDB releases, and deliver a record of successful performance capabilities across release qualification, production performance, capacity management, and query and systems optimization
Lead benchmarking and modeling that guide hardware selection and capacity planning for the fleet, and the telemetry, dashboards, and analysis that show how the production fleet performs against its targets
Hold the organization to trust standards, including scalability, service health, and the performance plans behind every release. Put proactive plans in place for systemic performance issues and technical debt
Drive a production-first culture of service ownership. Personally coordinate performance-related production incident response within the cloud, and defuse cross-cloud performance issues on behalf of the database
Make the hard resourcing decisions that keep the portfolio on its commitments, and shift teams as business priorities move
Stay close to teams and customers who feel database performance, and use that insight to change what we build and how we operate
Lead a collection of teams that make up the performance portfolio. This role manages other engineering managers
Develop talent from Manager through Director, and coach engineers from early career through principal
Build a high-performing, inclusive, geographically distributed organization. Motivate your teams and peer leaders. Share bad news early, solve the problems you can solve, and escalate when scope requires it
Be the partner senior leaders in other clouds call when performance, capacity, or release risk is on the table. Build durable relationships with directors, senior directors, VPs, and the architects who support this area, and keep those architects informed and empowered
You're Our Person If…
BS or higher degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience
Subject-matter expertise in the performance of large-scale databases, storage, or distributed systems
Proven record of owning a technology portfolio and delivering successful services or capabilities across multiple releases, on a year-plus horizon
10+ years of engineering management experience, including 5+ years managing other managers, and a track record of developing both managers and senior individual contributors
15+ years of experience in performance engineering or software engineering on databases, storage, or distributed systems, including 5+ years leading performance, scalability, or release-qualification teams
Performance engineering background on systems software, ideally databases, storage, or distributed systems, with strong CS fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, concurrency, memory management) and the technical depth to engage on designs and code in Java or C/C++
Hands-on experience with load, benchmark, and regression testing, ideally for multi-tenant workloads at scale, and with root cause analysis of performance and scalability problems in complex distributed systems
Strong SQL and performance data analysis (CPU, latency, throughput, per-tenant resource use)
Accountability for architecture and for trust outcomes, not only for a single team's sprint
Strong judgment on prioritization, resourcing, and when to escalate
Excellent communication across database, storage, infrastructure, application performance, and analytics teams: you can set a vision, tell the truth about risk, and bring peer leaders with you
Integrity, high energy, and a growth mindset: you report what the data shows, seek feedback, and keep learning, with a collaborative style
Even Better If…
MS or PhD in databases or distributed systems
Deep knowledge of database internals: optimizer, query execution and optimization, storage, transactions, concurrency control, memory management
Experience with performance workloads, system benchmarks, release qualification, and production performance investigation
Splunk or similar telemetry, dashboards, and fleet-scale performance management
Systems programming experience (C/C++ or Java), profiling, JVM tuning, and heap dump analysis
SQL, Linux, data analysis and visualization, and experimental design
Statistical analysis, benchmarking, and capacity modeling
Operating system and network fundamentals: processes, threads, memory, file systems, storage, TCP/IP
Cloud platforms and infrastructure (AWS, GCP), Docker, and Kubernetes
Experience leading engineering organizations through V2MOM planning, agile delivery, service ownership, and incident response
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.
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Posting Statement
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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 $218,400 - $365,200 annually. In select cities within the San Francisco and New York City metropolitan area, the base salary range for this role is $263,200 - $401,400 annually.

The range represents base salary only, and does not include company bonus, incentive for sales roles, equity or benefits, as applicable.
