Forward Deployment Engineer (MTS), AI Labs
Posted 3 days ago
The role in short
Embed with customers to build, test, and deploy reliable AI agent automations for enterprise applications like SAP and Oracle.
To get the best candidate experience, please consider applying for a maximum of 3 roles within 12 months to ensure you are not duplicating efforts.
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.
Forward Deployment Engineer
AI agents can reason about what needs to happen. Getting them to reliably do work inside the software businesses actually run on is the next frontier.
We’re building Systems Integration Agent: computer use for the enterprise. It learns how to operate applications like SAP, Oracle, and Workday, then turns that knowledge into reusable, code-backed actions. The challenge goes beyond making an impressive demo: customers need automation they can trust with consequential business processes.
Our team operates as a small startup within Salesforce AI Labs, separate from the main engineering and product organizations. You’ll work directly with the team’s leader and engineers, alongside customers, with the autonomy to shape an early product and the resources of Salesforce to back you up.
As a Value Acceleration Engineer, you’ll write code, build alongside customers, and get real workflows into production. This is forward-deployed engineering on an emerging product: what you learn in deployments will help determine what we build next.
What You’ll Actually Be Doing
Build Directly With Customers
- Work with process owners and customer IT to select workflows, define success, and secure the test access and data needed to build.
- Run hands-on sessions that help customers use the product themselves, with clear scope and readiness expectations.
- Help customers understand where the product can deliver value, explain its capabilities and limitations clearly, and connect technical results to business outcomes.
Engineer Reliable Automation
- Write custom JavaScript tools when existing capabilities cannot complete a task.
- Debug failures across browser behavior, agent execution, application state, and backend services.
- Build tests for business outcomes, exceptions, partial completion, and recovery.
- Help launch and stabilize workflows, documenting monitoring and recovery procedures and establishing support ownership with the team.
Make the Next Deployment Easier
- Turn deployment lessons into reusable tools and tests, and work with core engineering to address recurring product gaps.
- Use AI development tools thoughtfully while remaining accountable for code quality, security, and maintainability.
Working With Customers
- Expect approximately 40–60% travel, typically several days onsite at a time, for customer discovery, hands-on build sessions, and launches.
You’re Our Person If…
- You can write and debug JavaScript or TypeScript and reason about web applications, APIs, and data flow.
- You enjoy working directly with users: asking precise questions, building alongside them, and explaining technical problems clearly.
- You’ve built working software and can explain your implementation choices, tests, and debugging.
- 2+ years of relevant experience.
Helpful Experience
- Playwright, browser automation, browser extensions, RPA, or enterprise integration.
- Agent systems, tool execution, evaluations, or failure recovery.
- SAP, Oracle, Workday, Salesforce, or similarly complex enterprise applications.
- Forward-deployed engineering or customer-facing product development.
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.
Accommodations
If you need a reasonable accommodation during the application or the recruiting process, please submit a request via this Accommodations Request Form.
Please note that Salesforce uses artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help our recruiters assess and evaluate candidates’ resumes and qualifications throughout the recruiting process. Humans will always make any candidate selection and hiring decisions. Please see our Candidate Privacy Statement for more information about how we use your personal data and your rights, including with regard to use of AI tools and opt out options.
Posting Statement
Salesforce is an equal opportunity employer and maintains a policy of non-discrimination with all employees and applicants for employment. What does that mean exactly? It means that at Salesforce, we believe in equality for all. And we believe we can lead the path to equality in part by creating a workplace that’s inclusive, and free from discrimination. Know your rights: workplace discrimination is illegal. Any employee or potential employee will be assessed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications – without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression or identity, transgender status, age, disability, veteran or marital status, political viewpoint, or other classifications protected by law. This policy applies to current and prospective employees, no matter where they are in their Salesforce employment journey. It also applies to recruiting, hiring, job assignment, compensation, promotion, benefits, training, assessment of job performance, discipline, termination, and everything in between. Recruiting, hiring, and promotion decisions at Salesforce are fair and based on merit. The same goes for compensation, benefits, promotions, transfers, reduction in workforce, recall, training, and education.
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 $117,200 - $176,700 annually. In select cities within the San Francisco and New York City metropolitan area, the base salary range for this role is $141,200 - $194,200 annually. The range represents base salary only, and does not include company bonus, incentive for sales roles, equity or benefits, as applicable.
Prep for this interview
5 questions likely to come up at Salesforce, each matched to a line in this posting.
- 1Discovery and scoping
They wrote: “Run hands-on sessions that help customers use the product themselves, with clear scope and readiness expectations.”
How do you decide what to build first when a customer wants ten things?
How to answer
Why they ask: FDEs have limited weeks per customer. This tests judgment about value, effort and risk.
- Score each request by business value and by effort, with the customer in the room
- Pick one item that proves value fast and unblocks later work
- Write down what's out of scope so it doesn't creep back in
- Revisit the list after the first release, with real usage data
Tip: Show a simple way to rank the list and name what you'd leave out on purpose.
- 2Integrations and APIs
They wrote: “You can write and debug JavaScript or TypeScript and reason about web applications, APIs, and data flow.”
A customer's API starts returning errors in production at 2am. What do you do?
How to answer
Why they ask: FDEs often own production for their customers. This tests incident handling and communication.
- Check your side first: logs, recent deploys, retries piling up
- Stop the damage (pause jobs, queue requests, turn off the feature)
- Tell the customer what you see and what you've done, in plain words
- Afterwards: add a check that would have caught it, and write a short report
Tip: Split the answer into the first hour and the week after.
- 3LLMs, RAG and agents
They wrote: “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.”
A customer wants a chatbot over their internal documents. How do you build it?
How to answer
Why they ask: RAG is the most common first project. They want the whole path, from messy files to answers people trust.
- Collect and clean the documents; handle permissions per user
- Split them into chunks, embed, and store with source links
- Retrieve, then answer with citations; say “I don't know” when retrieval is weak
- Build a test set of real questions with expected answers before launch
Tip: Spend more time on the data and on testing than on the model.
- 4Cloud, deployment and security
They wrote: “Use AI development tools thoughtfully while remaining accountable for code quality, security, and maintainability.”
The customer's security team sends a 200-question review. How do you handle it?
How to answer
Why they ask: Security reviews often block deals. FDEs help get through them.
- Start from your company's standard answers (SOC 2 report, past reviews)
- Answer clearly; don't oversell
- Bring in your security team for anything you're unsure of
- Keep the new answers for the next customer
Tip: Reuse past answers, flag honest gaps, and offer a call for the hard questions.
- 5Ownership and working with customers
They wrote: “Help launch and stabilize workflows, documenting monitoring and recovery procedures and establishing support ownership with the team.”
Tell me about something you shipped that broke in production.
How to answer
Why they ask: Everyone has broken production. They want to hear you own it and change something afterwards.
- What broke and who it affected
- How you found out and what you did in the first hour
- The root cause, said plainly
- What you changed so it can't happen the same way again
Tip: Pick a real one with a cost. Spend most of the answer on what you changed.
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