Principal Applied AI Architect

Description

About the role

Our Canada Architecture team works on Salesforce’s largest and most complex customers across Canada’s many industries. We don’t stop at showing customers what’s possible; we prove it by building it with them. Success here is a working prototype or a deployed asset, not a great deck.

As a Principal or Distinguished Applied AI Architect, you will be the trusted technical lead for a set of strategic accounts. You’ll help design agentic AI architectures that hold up under real scrutiny: governed multi-agent systems, headless and API-first experiences, and unified data and integration patterns that span Agentforce, Data 360, MuleSoft, and the customer’s existing systems. You’ll work across the full engagement. That means framing the problem with C-level and Chief Architect stakeholders, building the prototype that proves the value, and handing it off cleanly to partners and delivery teams so it scales into production and becomes a reusable play for the whole organization.

You’ll sit within the Canada architecture team and belong to the broader Regulated Industries & Canada architecture community. That gives you exposure to patterns and peers within the unregulated industries within Canada, and also the regulated industries across financial services, healthcare, and life sciences.

What You’ll Do

Lead agentic AI architecture on strategic accounts. Serve as the aligned architect for your accounts. Run discovery and org assessments, set the current- and future-state architecture, and own architectural direction from first conversation through production handoff. Shape decisions on agent orchestration, MCP and agent-to-agent interoperability, headless and composable design, data foundations, and the trust and governance layer.

Build to prove value. Co-build working prototypes and proof-of-value assets on customers’ own data and objects, using modern AI-assisted development tools. Turn a hypothesis into something a business sponsor can see and use within weeks, not quarters.

Run and extend our engagement plays. Deliver our defined engagement models. These cover the economics of an agentic operating model, headless experiences that keep governance intact, governed multi-agent systems at enterprise scale, and executive North Star architecture. Add new content and reusable components back to the shared library, so each engagement leaves the next one further ahead.

Own the handoff and the path to scale. Package architecture, data dictionaries, process maps, and agent metadata so that partners, SIs, and delivery teams can take the work to production without losing the design intent. Hold clear entry and exit gates so delivery stays planned and predictable.

Advise executives on business outcomes. Translate architecture into business value for CIOs, CTOs, Chief Architects, and line-of-business leaders. Fit designs to industry relevant and country specific regulatory, data residency, model risk, and operating-model constraints. Represent Salesforce at executive briefings, architecture review boards, and industry events.

Elevate the team and the field. Mentor architects and account teams. Contribute points of view, reference architectures, and reusable assets. Work closely with AEs, SEs, Professional Services, forward-deployed engineers, partners, and product teams, with each role doing its own job well.

What Success Looks Like

• Architecture-sourced pipeline and measurable progression on priority opportunities in your accounts.
• Agentforce and Data 360 consumption milestones reached and tied to customer outcomes.
• Prototypes that convert into production commitments and reusable plays adopted by other architects.
• Customers who treat you as their go-to architecture advisor, shown by repeat engagement and sponsorship from executive and Chief Architect stakeholders.
• Disciplined engagement records, so your impact is visible and credited.
  
  

What You’ll Bring

• Bilingual French & English to support relevant Canada regions.
• 10+ years in enterprise or solution architecture, including significant customer-facing work with knowledge of B2B and B2C business patterns.
• Deep hands-on experience with the Salesforce platform and enterprise integration, ideally MuleSoft and API-led design.
• Practical, current experience designing and building AI solutions. This includes LLM-based agents, retrieval and grounding, agent orchestration, and emerging interoperability standards such as MCP and A2A.
• Builder credibility. You personally prototype using code and/or AI-assisted development tools, and you’re comfortable working in Git-based workflows.
• Working knowledge of regulatory and risk requirements: privacy, data residency, model risk management, auditability, and AI governance. You also know how these requirements shape architecture decisions.
• Executive presence. You can hold a contested architecture debate with a Chief Architect and move it to a decision.
• A team-first operating style. You’re comfortable working within aligned coverage, sharing assets, and making others better.
  
  

Major Canadian Industries Served

Our engagements cross Canada’s major industry sectors, focusing on manufacturing, automotive, energy, transportation, retail, consumer goods, hospitality, telecommunications, media, healthcare, life sciences, professional services, technology, and oil & gas.

Nice to have

• Salesforce certifications such as Agentforce Specialist, Data Cloud Consultant, Application/System Architect, or progress toward CTA.
• Experience on the customer or SI side of large customer transformations.
• Exposure to process intelligence or agentic operations tooling.
• Published points of view, conference talks, or open reusable assets.
• MBA or equivalent experience understanding advanced business concepts and the technologies that support them.
  
  

Required Qualifications

• Knowledge of related applications, relational databases, and ERP technologies
• Strong oral, written, presentation, collaboration, and interpersonal communication skills
• Ability to work as part of a team to solve technical problems in varied political environments
• Minimum of 10 years of professional experience.