Principal Architect, Salesforce Platform & AI

About this role

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Job Details

Position Summary:
The Principal Architect, Salesforce Platform & AI serves as the enterprise architecture leader responsible for the strategic direction, governance, and long-term evolution of the Salesforce platform ecosystem and AI-enabled capabilities.
This role establishes the architecture vision that enables Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Experience Cloud, Data Cloud, automation platforms, and emerging AI technologies to operate as a secure, scalable, and cohesive enterprise platform. The Principal Architect defines the technology strategy, architectural standards, and governance framework that drive consistency and reuse across business domains while enabling rapid innovation and delivery.
Working across business leadership, enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, data, integration, DevSecOps, and delivery organizations, this individual ensures that platform investments align with enterprise objectives, regulatory requirements, operational excellence, and responsible AI adoption.
This role provides technical leadership to globally distributed architecture and engineering teams and serves as the primary authority for enterprise-level Salesforce architecture decisions.
Key Responsibilities:
Enterprise Platform and AI Strategy

• Define and continuously evolve the enterprise Salesforce platform strategy, target-state architecture, and multi-year technology roadmap.

• Establish a unified architecture vision spanning Sales, Service, Experience, Integration, Data, Automation, and AI capabilities.

• Maintain comprehensive visibility across Salesforce organizations, shared services, integrations, data domains, platform dependencies, technical debt, and operational risk.

• Define architectural approaches for enterprise AI adoption, including agent-based capabilities, intelligent automation, data readiness, governance, and human oversight frameworks.

• Evaluate emerging Salesforce, AI, and cloud platform capabilities and determine strategic applicability and business value.

• Identify opportunities for platform consolidation, modernization, standardization, and cost optimization.

• Align platform investments with enterprise objectives including scalability, security, reliability, agility, and operational efficiency.

• Guide technology investment decisions and establish strategic architecture priorities across the Salesforce ecosystem.

Architecture Governance and Technology Leadership

• Lead architecture governance through the Design Authority, Architecture Review Board, Salesforce Center of Excellence, and enterprise governance forums.

• Define and maintain enterprise architecture standards, reference architectures, reusable patterns, technical guardrails, and decision frameworks.

• Govern architecture across application development, integrations, data architecture, identity management, security, DevSecOps, AI services, automation platforms, and operational tooling.

• Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Data, and Integration teams to ensure alignment with enterprise standards.

• Drive architectural consistency across business domains while balancing innovation, delivery speed, and operational risk.

• Establish and manage architecture exception processes, decision records, and platform standards documentation.

• Resolve complex cross-domain architectural challenges and influence strategic technology decisions across the enterprise.

Platform Health and Operational Excellence

• Own architecture accountability for platform scalability, performance, resilience, maintainability, security, and operational health.

• Establish measurable platform health indicators covering technical debt, release quality, security posture, adoption, reliability, and cost efficiency.

• Lead architecture strategy for environments, release management, DevSecOps practices, testing frameworks, observability, and operational readiness.

• Ensure alignment between architecture standards and production implementation through design reviews and governance checkpoints.

• Drive continuous improvement initiatives focused on platform simplification, automation, reliability, and engineering productivity.

• Sponsor development of reusable assets, accelerators, integration frameworks, and architecture playbooks.

Leadership and Talent Development

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship for architects and senior engineers across global and distributed teams.

• Influence executive stakeholders and technology leaders through clear communication of architecture strategy, risks, investment priorities, and business outcomes.

• Develop architecture capabilities, succession plans, and technical excellence programs across internal teams and strategic partners.

• Foster a culture of engineering discipline, innovation, accountability, and continuous learning.

• Act as the primary escalation point for complex architecture decisions impacting the enterprise Salesforce ecosystem.

Required Qualifications:

• 12+ years of experience in enterprise architecture, platform architecture, solution architecture, or related technology leadership roles.

• 7+ years of experience designing and governing Salesforce solutions within complex multi-business-unit or multi-org environments.

• Deep expertise in Salesforce architecture, including security, identity, integration, data architecture, automation, platform scalability, and application lifecycle management.

• Demonstrated experience defining enterprise technology strategies, architecture roadmaps, governance models, and platform operating…