Salesforce · 4 hours ago
Principal Data Scientist
Palo Alto, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Lead/Staff
$148K/yr - $260K/yrSalesforce is the #1 AI CRM, where humans with agents drive customer success together. The role involves leading advanced LLM research and model development for AgentForce’s production services, requiring hands-on involvement across the full model development lifecycle, along with technical leadership and mentorship.
Agentic AIArtificial Intelligence (AI)Cloud ComputingCRMSaaSSales EnablementSoftware
Responsibilities
Own and execute hands-on work across the full model development lifecycle, including data preparation, model training, fine-tuning, evaluation, iteration, and deployment readiness
Lead end-to-end research initiatives on LLM training, fine-tuning, alignment, and optimization for production use cases
Design, implement, and iterate on reinforcement learning (RL) and continuous learning pipelines (e.g., RLHF, RLAIF, offline/online feedback loops)
Conduct rigorous experimentation, ablation studies, and failure analysis to drive measurable model improvements
Translate research prototypes into production-grade models that meet latency, scalability, reliability, and safety requirements
Serve as the technical POC for complex AgentForce AI projects, driving alignment across research, engineering, product, and platform teams
Define best practices for model training, fine-tuning, evaluation, and release readiness
Influence architectural and modeling decisions across the AgentForce AI stack
Mentor junior scientists and engineers through direct technical guidance and code-level reviews
Foster a culture of strong scientific rigor, reproducibility, and ownership
Contribute to Salesforce’s external research presence through publications, talks, and collaborations
Qualification
Required
PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, AI, or a related field
Strong publication record in top-tier venues (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP) or equivalent industry research impact
Demonstrated hands-on experience owning the full model development lifecycle, not limited to research or design
Deep expertise in large-scale model training and fine-tuning, especially for LLMs
Strong background in reinforcement learning, preference learning, or human-in-the-loop learning
Experience building and maintaining continuous learning systems using real-world feedback signals
Solid understanding of model evaluation, alignment, and robustness in production environments
Advanced proficiency in Python, with significant hands-on coding experience
Deep experience with PyTorch, TensorFlow or similar deep learning packages
Practical experience with modern LLM tooling, such as: Hugging Face (Transformers, Accelerate, PEFT), Distributed training frameworks (DeepSpeed, FSDP, etc.), ML orchestration and scaling tools (Ray, Kubernetes, internal platforms)
Strong data analysis and experimentation skills (NumPy, Pandas, custom evaluation pipelines)
Experience mentoring and developing junior researchers or engineers
Strong communication skills across research, engineering, and executive stakeholders
Preferred
Experience deploying and iterating on models in production, high-availability systems
Background in enterprise AI, agentic systems, or LLM platforms at scale
Familiarity with trust, safety, or governance frameworks for AI systems
Experience with large-scale distributed compute environments (multi-GPU / multi-node training)
Benefits
Time off programs
Medical
Dental
Vision
Mental health support
Paid parental leave
Life and disability insurance
401(k)
Employee stock purchasing program
Company
Salesforce
Salesforce is a cloud-based software company that provides customer relationship management software and applications.
Founded in 1999
10001+ employees
H1B Sponsorship
Salesforce has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (1883)
2024 (2296)
2023 (1850)
2022 (2849)
2021 (2124)
2020 (1960)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$65.38MKey Investors
Starboard ValueEmergence CapitalHalsey Minor
2022-10-18Post Ipo Equity
2004-06-23IPO
2003-01-01Series Unknown· $1M
Leadership Team
Arundhati Bhattacharya
Chairman & Ceo Salesforce India
Kendall Collins
CEO, GovCloud - Salesforce
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