Lead, Data Platform Engineer - Data Governance
Role summary
Salesforce is seeking a Senior Lead Data Platform Engineer focused on Data Governance to architect and implement systems ensuring product and customer data is reliable, compliant, and AI-ready. This role involves defining technical strategy for data trust, building metadata frameworks, improving data quality, and managing metadata as a product. The engineer will establish quality assessment frameworks, implement technical controls for data retention and access, and ensure compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA. Operating as a data marketplace, the role requires partnering with users to enhance data usability and reduce time-to-find and time-to-use. The ideal candidate has 8+ years of data platform engineering experience, mastery in data governance, and proficiency in event-driven architectures, Kafka, and graph databases.
## Description
We are seeking a Senior Lead Data Platform Engineer to drive the technical implementation of Trust and Data Governance within our Customer Success Data Platform. In this role, you will architect systems that ensure our product and customer data—both structured and unstructured—is reliable, compliant, and AI-ready. You’ll work at the intersection of data engineering, metadata management, and AI, building frameworks that empower our enterprise to innovate with confidence.
Our ideal candidate has extensive engineering experience, a strong track record of implementing data governance at scale, and a passion for enabling AI-ready data platforms.
What You’ll Do
1. Architect Governance for AI Readiness
- Define and execute the technical strategy for data trust, ensuring both structured metrics and unstructured datasets are AI-ready.
- Build and scale discovery capabilities and metadata frameworks so users can find and apply trusted datasets efficiently.
- Improve data quality through well-governed instrumentation and schema practices across the platform.
2. Metadata & Semantic Engineering
- Design and implement automated ways to expose data quality and usability metadata through knowledge graphs.
- Enable semantic understanding and automated reasoning to accelerate AI-powered application development.
- Manage metadata as a product, leveraging Graph Databases or ontology management tools to bridge raw data and AI agents.
3. Frameworks & Compliance
- Establish and maintain quality assessment frameworks, benchmarks, and automated reporting to align with global data standards.
- Implement technical controls for data retention, access, and classification.
- Ensure the platform meets rigorous external regulatory requirements, including GDPR, CCPA, and SOX.
4. Champion the Data Marketplace
- Operate the platform as a two-sided marketplace, supporting both data engineers producing data and application developers consuming it.
- Partner with users to understand pain points in data usability and build solutions that reduce time-to-find and time-to-use.
What We’re Looking For
Engineering Expertise
- 8+ years in data platform or infrastructure engineering, with experience in data streaming, telemetry, or observability domains.
Governance Mastery
- Proven track record implementing internal data policies (classification, access) and external regulations (GDPR, CCPA).
Technical Proficiency
- Deep knowledge of event-driven architectures, instrumentation schemas, Kafka, and real-time data pipelines.
- Hands-on experience with Graph Databases or Ontology management to support AI consumption.
- Experience in the Salesforce ecosystem (Data360, Agentforce, Service Cloud, etc.) is a plus.
Strategic Execution
- Ability to align technical roadmaps with industry trends and deliver high-impact features in complex enterprise environments.
Communication
- Exceptional skill in distilling technical complexity for diverse audiences and driving functional alignment.
Why Join This Team?
At Salesforce, we are shaping the future of business at the intersection of AI + Data + CRM. You will be at the heart of this mission, building the foundation of trust that enables our global customers to innovate and succeed. Join us to empower enterprise-scale AI initiatives with data you can trust.