Hands-on Salesforce Architect

Position: Hands-on Salesforce Architect

Location: 100% remote. Anywhere in the US.

Duration: 6-12 month contract

Visa Restrictions: US Citizen or GC only. They are hoping to make a case to the board after 12m for them to approve an FTE role. & they have not had the best of luck with visa candidates in the past.

Interview Process: 1 virtual interview with team

Interview Times: interviews will start end of next week in the afternoon. (10/14, 10/15,10/16)

Submittal Requirements: reference and a screenshot of your virtual meeting with them.

Competition/Internal HR: yes, one other firm. No one in play as of 10/8.

Start Date: ideal start is week of 10/26. 

Team: a couple SF admins, developers, Sr Director. Role right now reports to the interim CTO. AMS product Owners, BA, QA teams.

Notes from the call:

• Only SF integration is with Fonteva
• SF environment is customized
• Fonteva experience is highly highly highly preferred but not a hard requirement

Hard Requirements (these are very specific so please read):

• Salesforce Certified Platform Developer (Certification)
• One or more of the following certs below in addition to the above:
• • Salesforce Certified Platform Data Architect, Salesforce Certified Platform Integration Architect or Salesforce Certified Platform Sharing and Visibility Architect
• 8 years of experience a bachelor’s degree
• 12 years of experience if there’s no degree
• 5 years of experience of hands-on Salesforce delivery
• Architectural experience must be present but can be limited

Job Summary

• The Senior Salesforce Architect, CRM/AMS is the hands-on technical architect for the Association's Salesforce and Fonteva ecosystem.
• The position is accountable for solution architecture, technical design quality, platform integrity and the engineering standards used to change and operate this business-critical environment.
• The architect works closely with the Senior Director, CRM/AMS Platforms & Architecture, the AMS Product Owner and the Senior Business Systems Analyst.
• The role translates approved business rules and prioritized product needs into secure, supportable designs for membership, join and renewal, dues and eligibility, billing and payments, remittance, constituent service, events and related capabilities.
• The environment serves a federated association in which national, state and local organizations may use different platforms and follow different approved rules.
• The architect must design explicit data, integration and security boundaries that support interoperability without assuming uniform systems or processes.
• The position works within enterprise architecture, data, security and delivery standards and does not replace those accountabilities.
• The architect supports the current Salesforce/Fonteva platform while reducing unnecessary customization, technical debt and vendor dependence.
• The role must also preserve future options by designing modular interfaces, documenting the current state and contributing objective technical analysis to platform modernization, migration or selective capability replacement decisions.

Primary Job Duties and Major Functions

• 25 % Solution Architecture and Technical Design - Define and govern solution designs for Salesforce/Fonteva and the CRM/AMS capabilities that depend on it.
• 20 % Platform Engineering and Technical Quality - Provide hands-on technical leadership for Salesforce configuration, automation, custom development and managed-package extensions.
• 20 % Integration Data and Federated Architecture - Design reliable data movement and system interactions across the national, state and local membership ecosystem.
• 15 % Security Reliability and Operational Stewardship - Protect the security, performance and operational stability of Salesforce/Fonteva and its member-facing services.
• 10 % Release Environment and Technical Governance - Establish the technical controls required to move changes safely from design through production.
• 10 % Modernization Vendor Transition and Technical Strategy - Provide the technical analysis and knowledge transfer needed to strengthen internal ownership and guide the future of the CRM/AMS ecosystem.

Education

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, software engineering or a related field.

Specific Type of Experience Required

• Eight years (12 years in lieu of a bachelor’s degree) of progressively responsible enterprise application experience
• At least five years of hands-on Salesforce delivery
• At least three years serving as a Salesforce solution architect, technical architect or technical lead for a complex production environment.
• Experience must include architecture ownership for custom development, integrations, external users, data, security and release engineering.
• Owning end-to-end technical designs in a production Salesforce environment with significant custom code, automation, integrations and managed packages.
• Reviewing and diagnosing Apex, Lightning Web Components, Flow, SOQL, metadata, sharing and integration behavior rather than relying only on high-level design artifacts.
• Designing secure Salesforce Experience Cloud or comparable customer or member portal access, including external identities and unauthenticated scenarios.
• Designing APIs and data exchanges across multiple systems, organizations or operating models, with reconciliation and support controls.
• Leading architecture reviews, technical estimation, code and configuration reviews, test strategy and production-release readiness.
• Remediating technical debt, performance problems, security gaps, upgrade constraints or unstable production behavior in an established Salesforce org.
• Directing technical work performed by developers, administrators, consultants and managed-service providers without relying on direct supervisory authority.
• Creating architecture, operating and decision documentation that internal teams can use after a consultant or key technical resource leaves.

Knowledge and Skills

• Salesforce architecture across data modeling, security and sharing, automation, Apex, Lightning Web Components, Flow, Experience Cloud, asynchronous processing, APIs and platform limits.
• Tradeoff analysis among declarative configuration, custom development, managed-package capability, middleware and external products.
• Managed-package architecture, extension patterns, dependency management, release compatibility and vendor-supported upgrade paths.
• Enterprise integration patterns including REST and SOAP APIs, platform events or other event patterns, batch processing, identity, error handling, retry and reconciliation.
• CRM and association management concepts including constituent relationships, organizational affiliations, membership status, eligibility, join and renewal, dues, pricing, billing, payments, refunds, remittance, events and member service.
• Federated or multi-entity operating models in which independent organizations share standards and data without sharing one application or one set of local policies.
• Security architecture including least privilege, profiles, permission sets, sharing, field-level security, external-user access, integration identities, payment-card and personal-data protection, and auditability.
• Salesforce DevOps practices including metadata management, Git-based source control, automated testing, CI/CD, environment strategy and controlled deployment.
• Performance engineering, governor limits, data volume, storage, asynchronous workload, monitoring, incident response, backup and recovery.
• Architecture documentation including current-state and target-state diagrams, data and integration models, sequence diagrams, decision records, nonfunctional requirements and technical standards.
• Technical-debt assessment, code and automation inventory, dependency analysis and staged remediation planning.
• Agile product delivery, backlog refinement, estimation, dependency management, release governance and collaboration with product, analysis, QA, data and engineering roles.
• Approved AI-assisted code and system analysis practices with human validation, privacy protection, access control and reproducible evidence.

Abilities and Attributes

• Able to move between architecture strategy and detailed technical evidence, including code, metadata, logs, data structures and integration behavior.
• Able to explain complex designs and risks in clear business terms while giving developers precise implementation direction.
• Able to distinguish a policy question, process problem, data defect, configuration issue, integration failure and code defect before recommending a solution.
• Able to challenge unnecessary customization and vendor recommendations constructively and document the basis for a technical decision.
• Able to balance urgent production or renewal needs with long-term platform health and avoid short-term fixes that create hidden risk.
• Able to lead through technical authority, facilitation and evidence without depending on a management title or direct reports.
• Strong written communication, disciplined documentation and consistent follow-through on risks, decisions and corrective actions.
• Vendor-neutral and willing to support the current platform while evaluating future options objectively.
• Comfortable working in a hybrid environment with business leaders, technical specialists, vendors and geographically distributed association partners.

Certifications

• Salesforce Certified Platform Developer and one or more architecture-domain credentials such as Salesforce Certified Platform Data Architect, Salesforce Certified Platform Integration Architect or Salesforce Certified Platform Sharing and Visibility Architect are preferred.
• Salesforce Certified Application Architect, Salesforce Certified System Architect or Salesforce Certified Technical Architect credentials are desirable but not required.

Applications and Technology

The current environment includes Salesforce, Fonteva, Experience Cloud, Azure DevOps, Git-based source control, Copado or comparable Salesforce DevOps tooling, Power BI, Microsoft 365, API and integration technologies, data and reporting platforms, identity and security services and approved generative AI tools. The architect is expected to work across other products and patterns as the future CRM/AMS architecture evolves.

Preferred but Not Required

• Direct Fonteva architecture, development, administration or upgrade experience. Strong preference will be given to candidates who understand how to extend a Salesforce managed package without undermining its supportability.
• Experience with association management systems, membership organizations, nonprofits, healthcare associations or other constituent-centered enterprises.
• Experience with national, state, local, franchise, chapter or other federated organizational structures and independently governed business rules.
• Experience with complex dues or pricing calculation, renewals, accounts receivable, payments, refunds, remittance and financial reconciliation.
• Experience modernizing a heavily customized Salesforce org, reducing managed-service dependence or transferring architecture ownership to an internal team.
• Experience with platform migration, selective capability replacement, API-led decomposition or a staged strangler architecture.
• Experience analyzing Salesforce licensing, feature use, storage, environments and technical dependencies to support contract right-sizing.

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