Salesforce Platform Lead / Product Owner

Location: London
Salary: Circa £100,000
Employment Type: Permanent

The Role

We are looking for a Salesforce Platform Lead to take ownership of how Salesforce is designed, developed, governed and operated across the organisation.

This is a key hire at an important point in the organisation’s technology transformation. A significant programme is underway to simplify and replatform the Salesforce landscape, moving away from an environment where Salesforce has historically been used as a broad development toolkit and towards a clearer, more structured strategic platform.

The role sits between Enterprise Architecture, Software Development and service management. It requires someone with strong technical knowledge of Salesforce who can also take responsibility for how the platform performs as an ongoing business service.

This is not a traditional Enterprise Architect position. Enterprise Architecture will determine where Salesforce fits within the wider solution; the Salesforce Platform Lead will own how that solution should be implemented effectively within Salesforce.

Key Responsibilities

• Own Salesforce as a strategic technology platform across the organisation.
• Provide technical direction on how solutions should be designed and built within Salesforce.
• Understand where Salesforce should and should not be used within the wider technology landscape.
• Establish and maintain development standards, guidelines and good practice for teams building within the platform.
• Work closely with Enterprise Architecture to translate wider architectural decisions into appropriate Salesforce solutions.
• Partner closely with Software Development teams to ensure Salesforce solutions are built consistently and appropriately.
• Provide oversight of the platform as both a technical environment and an operational business service.
• Monitor whether Salesforce is performing as expected and delivering the required business value.
• Take ownership of areas such as service performance, SLAs, licensing and ongoing platform management.
• Help simplify the existing Salesforce landscape and reduce unnecessary complexity and customisation.
• Support the wider Salesforce replatforming programme and ensure decisions made today create a platform that can be effectively maintained and operated longer term.

The Salesforce Landscape

Salesforce is one of five strategic platforms within the organisation’s future technology landscape.

Historically, Salesforce has been used extensively as a development toolkit, resulting in a mixture of functionality and data sitting within the platform that is not necessarily best suited to Salesforce.

A major programme is now underway to simplify and replatform the environment.

As other strategic platforms are introduced and developed, including the organisation’s Inventory Management Ecosystem, significant amounts of network and service data currently held within Salesforce will move into the appropriate systems.

The objective is to create a significantly simpler Salesforce environment with a much clearer purpose within the overall technology ecosystem.

What We’re Looking For

The key requirement is someone who can combine strong Salesforce technical expertise with broader platform ownership.

You will need a strong understanding of:

• How the Salesforce platform fits together.
• What Salesforce is good at and where its limitations sit.
• How solutions should be designed and built within the platform.
• Development standards and technical governance.
• Working with developers and ensuring solutions are implemented appropriately.
• Managing Salesforce as an ongoing service rather than simply delivering projects within it.
• Platform performance and service management.
• SLAs and operational performance.
• Licensing and platform utilisation.
• Ensuring the organisation is receiving appropriate business value from the platform.

The ideal person will be comfortable operating between highly technical teams and broader technology and business stakeholders.

The Profile

This role could suit someone coming from a Salesforce architecture, technical consulting or platform leadership background who has moved beyond individual project delivery and taken broader ownership of the platform.

Equally, it could suit an experienced Salesforce Platform Manager or Platform Lead with sufficient technical depth to challenge development decisions and provide clear direction to engineering teams.

The challenge is finding someone who can bridge both worlds: technically credible enough to lead how Salesforce is built, while commercially and operationally minded enough to own it as a service.

Key Stakeholders

The role will work particularly closely with:

• Enterprise Architecture
• Software Development
• IT Delivery
• Product Management
• Other strategic platform teams
• Wider business stakeholders

There is a separate Enterprise Architecture function, so this position will complement rather than replace that capability.

Why This Role?

This is an opportunity to take ownership of Salesforce during a significant period of change rather than simply inheriting a steady-state platform.

The organisation is simplifying its wider technology environment around five strategic platforms, with Salesforce forming a key part of that future landscape.

The successful person will have the opportunity to influence how Salesforce is structured, governed and used as the replatforming programme progresses, while establishing the standards that will shape its longer-term development and operation.