Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Salesforce.Com Application Developer
💰 $85,000 to $130,000 per year
SalesforceCRMApplication Development
🎯 Role Definition
The Salesforce.Com Application Developer designs, configures, customizes, and maintains applications on the Salesforce.com platform. Working closely with business analysts, administrators, and development teams, this role builds scalable solutions using Apex, Visualforce, Lightning, integration APIs and declarative configuration to support sales, service and business operations. The Salesforce.Com Application Developer ensures high system performance, data integrity, user adoption, and ongoing enhancement of CRM capabilities to meet evolving business requirements.
📈 Career Progression
Typical Career Path
Entry Point From:
- Salesforce Administrator with dev focus
- Junior Salesforce Developer (Force.com / Apex)
- CRM Developer or Business Systems Engineer
Advancement To:
- Senior Salesforce Application Developer / Lead Salesforce Developer
- Salesforce Solutions Architect / Product Owner
- Director of CRM Engineering or Head of Salesforce Platform
Lateral Moves:
- Salesforce Integration Developer
- Salesforce Consultant – Cloud Solutions
- Platform Engineering Lead – Enterprise Systems
Core Responsibilities
Primary Functions
- Design and develop custom Salesforce.com applications using Apex, Visualforce, Lightning Web Components (LWC) and Force.com technologies aligned to business requirements.
- Analyze functional specifications, map business workflows to Salesforce features, and translate into technical solutions including custom objects, fields, triggers, flows and validation rules.
- Build integrations between Salesforce.com and external systems via REST/SOAP web services, middleware, APIs and data synchronisation tools.
- Configure Salesforce platform settings including user roles, profiles, permission sets, sharing rules, OWD settings and security models to ensure proper access and governance.
- Develop reports, dashboards and analytics tools to provide actionable insights to business users, supporting data‑driven decision making and tracking CRM performance.
- Perform system maintenance, trouble‑shoot production issues, debug code, manage data loads, and provide ongoing support to ensure system reliability and uptime.
- Lead or participate in code reviews, unit testing, integration testing and user acceptance testing (UAT) and support deployment activities using change sets, metadata APIs or CI/CD pipelines.
- Maintain knowledge of Salesforce.com updates, releases, best practices and new features, and apply to solutions for improved performance, scalability and user experience.
- Collaborate with administrators, business users, product owners and architects to scope enhancements, prioritize backlog items, estimate effort, and deliver enhancements in an agile development environment.
- Optimize application performance by modeling efficient data structures, designing best‑practice triggers and bulkification, managing governor limits and ensuring data model scalability.
- Develop user interfaces, Lightning pages, components, JavaScript controller logic, CSS styles, and dynamic content that improve usability and adoption.
- Perform data migrations, mass imports, data clean‑up, deduplication, and transformation of legacy data into Salesforce.com while preserving data integrity and compliance.
- Document technical designs, functional flows, configuration details, interfaces, deployment instructions, and end‑user support materials to build and maintain knowledge repositories.
- Design scalable architecture for custom solutions, anticipate future business needs, ensure modular reusable code, and provide guidance on technical debt and platform governance.
- Ensure compliance with data security, GDPR/privacy, audit logging, platform sharing models, and Salesforce security health best practices.
- Provide mentorship and technical leadership for junior developers, share best practices, build development culture and support continuous improvement.
- Participate in agile ceremonies (sprint planning, stand‑ups, retrospectives), manage backlog tasks, estimate development effort and ensure timely delivery.
- Monitor system usage, license consumption, platform limits, user adoption and provide recommendations to increase ROI on Salesforce investments.
- Assist in release planning, environment management (sandbox/prod), metadata migration, version control and change control processes.
- Partner with integration, analytics and operations teams to align Salesforce solutions with broader enterprise architecture, data warehouse and business intelligence platforms.
Secondary Functions
- Support ad‑hoc data requests such as data exports, Salesforce health metrics, configuration inventories and exploratory analysis of system usage.
- Contribute to the Salesforce platform team’s strategic roadmap by recommending architecture improvements, new cloud modules, automation frameworks or integration enhancements.
- Collaborate across business units, IT, data engineering and operations to translate business strategy into platform enhancements and capabilities.
- Participate in knowledge sharing, documentation sessions, lunch‑and‑learns and internal training to build Salesforce capability across the organization.
Required Skills & Competencies
Hard Skills (Technical)
- Proficiency in Apex, Visualforce, Lightning Web Components (LWC) and Salesforce Platform development.
- Strong knowledge of SOQL, SOSL, data modelling, Salesforce object architecture, relationships, sharing and security model.
- Experience with REST and SOAP API integrations, middleware connections, web services and data synchronisation.
- Skilled with front‑end web technologies: JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Lightning Design System (LDS) and UI component development.
- Experience with Salesforce declarative tools: Flow Builder, Process Builder, Workflow Rules, Approval Processes and configuration best practices.
- Familiarity with version control, CI/CD pipelines, sandbox management, change set deployments and release management.
- Strong problem‑solving and performance tuning skills: trigger optimisation, bulk processing, governor limit handling, code efficiency.
- Experience with data migration tools (Data Loader, ETL), mass imports, deduplication, cleaning legacy data and transformation.
- Understanding of CRM functional areas (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Experience Cloud) and how to extend them with custom development.
- Salesforce certifications preferred: Platform Developer I or II, App Builder, Administrator or equivalent.
Soft Skills
- Excellent communication skills, able to articulate technical concepts to business stakeholders and collaborate across cross‑functional teams.
- Strong analytical and problem‑solving mindset: able to translate business needs into scalable technical solutions and debug complex issues.
- Detail‑oriented and quality‑driven: ensure code, configuration and documentation meet high standards and compliance.
- Self‑motivated and accountable: deliver end‑to‑end functionality, take ownership of issues and maintain continuous improvement.
- Adaptable and resilient: thrive in dynamic environments, respond to shifting priorities, new releases and evolving business demands.
- Team‑oriented with leadership potential: mentor developers, advocate best practices and build development culture.
- Time‑management and multitasking: manage multiple tasks, sprints and deadlines while prioritising effectively.
- Strategic thinker: align Salesforce solutions with business goals, drive ROI and make decisions with a long‑term perspective.
- Learning mindset: stays current with evolving Salesforce features, frameworks and industry trends.
- Ethical and user‑centric: ensures user experience, data security and platform integrity are front of mind.
Education & Experience
Educational Background
Minimum Education:
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering or related technical field.
Preferred Education:
Bachelor’s degree plus Salesforce Developer or Administrator certifications (Platform Developer I/II) or equivalent experience.
Relevant Fields of Study:
- Computer Science / Software Engineering
- Information Systems / Business Technology
- Data Engineering / Analytics
- CRM Systems / Cloud Computing
- Business Administration (with a technical focus)