The Ultimate Guide to a Career as a Salesforce DevOps Engineer
Salesforce is the world’s no.1 customer relationship management (CRM) software, offering diverse career paths, excellent opportunities for progression and competitive salaries. Within the expansive world of Salesforce careers are a wealth of opportunities for ambitious individuals with a desire for professional growth and fulfilment.
Depending on your experience and skills, there is a role for you with Salesforce and we are here to help you find it. With just under 10 million new Salesforce jobs predicted to be created by 2026 there is no better time to work in Salesforce.
In this guide, we’ll introduce what a Salesforce DevOps Engineer is, the roles and responsibilities of a DevOps Engineer and qualities employers look for when hiring for this job role.
What is a Salesforce DevOps Engineer?
‘DevOps’ is a set of practices designed to help Salesforce teams build, test and release software faster and more reliably. For Salesforce, this means bringing together the Salesforce Developers and Salesforce Administrators responsible for building applications and the people releasing, monitoring and maintaining those applications, allowing the teams to communicate more effectively.
Salesforce DevOps Engineers oversee the seamless deployment of changes across the Salesforce platform, ensuring minimal bugs and disruptions to users throughout the software development cycle. They empower everyone on a team with the tools they need to collaborate effectively and drive new work through the development and release pipeline.
Salesforce DevOps Engineers are responsible for implementing scalable solutions including continuous delivery, optimisation, monitoring, release management and support of the end-to-end release process. Their job role requires deep understanding of business processes and up-to-date knowledge on new Salesforce features to identify opportunities for enhancements.
What does a Salesforce DevOps Engineer do?
A Salesforce DevOps Engineer plays a crucial role in optimising the development and deployment of Salesforce applications, enabling organisations to deliver high-quality software faster and more reliably. Their primary role is to integrate best practices from both the Salesforce platform and DevOps methodologies to enhance the collaboration between development and operations teams.
The day-to-day responsibilities of a Salesforce DevOps engineer vary widely across different industries. However, a Salesforce DevOps Engineer’s typical tasks include reviewing and merging other’s work in source control, setting up, monitoring and improving DevOps processes, overseeing the DevOps process and offering mentorship to others and/or guiding a team.
Why is a Salesforce DevOps Engineer role so interesting?
Although DevOps has long been established as the best way of creating and managing software on other platforms, it is relatively new to Salesforce. Despite this, DevOps has greatly benefitted Salesforce development processes and it ensures that there will be fewer service disruptions, making sure that everything is always running smoothly.
There’s no doubt that Salesforce DevOps Engineers are in demand as DevOps best practices are becoming an integral part of how businesses function. It is an exciting time for anyone wanting to progress into a Salesforce DevOps Engineer position as the boundaries of the role are ever changing which will create a multitude of future career opportunities.
How to land a Salesforce DevOps Engineer role?
To break into a Salesforce DevOps Engineer career, prior experience in Salesforce administration, Salesforce development or DevOps is incredibly valuable. You should also build on your understanding of the whole DevOps process and KPIs, and keep up to date with the latest developments, best practices and emerging technologies in Salesforce and DevOps.
During the interview process for a DevOps engineer role, you should be able to demonstrate your technical skills, problem solving abilities and knowledge of Salesforce and DevOps principles (all of which will not be possible without hands-on experience using the platform). Gaining relevant Salesforce certifications will also allow you to demonstrate your expertise and commitment to continuous learning and help you to build a strong portfolio.
What does progression look like for a Salesforce DevOps Engineer?
Anyone with experience in other Salesforce roles such as Salesforce Administrators or Salesforce Developers could step into a Salesforce DevOps Engineer role, as ‘DevOps’ is a set of practices that are blended from other roles. Individuals with experience on the Salesforce Platform will therefore already be using DevOps – perhaps without realising.
After gaining between 2-5 years of experience as a Salesforce DevOps Engineer, you will be considered for more mid-level positions. At this stage you will be working with more complex Salesforce technologies and setting up, monitoring and improving DevOps processes.
The Salesforce talent will then have to decide whether they want to ‘wear many hats’ or specialise in one area. A senior Salesforce DevOps Engineer has at least 5+ years of experience, typically as a Team Lead in a large, multidisciplinary team, delivering complex projects. Individuals in this role will be overseeing the DevOps process end-to-end and defining and tracking DevOps KPIs.
Salary expectations for a Salesforce DevOps Engineer
As with any career in the Salesforce ecosystem, salary expectations for Salesforce DevOps Engineers in the UK can vary based on factors such as location, level of experience, industry and the size of the organisation. However, as a general overview mid-level Salesforce DevOps Engineers with a few years of experience and a solid understanding of Salesforce technologies can command a salary of around £40-£60k and a senior-level DevOps Engineer can expect to receive a salary ranging upwards of £60k to £90k and in more in some cases.
