Director, Salesforce Technical Platform

Cencora•Conshohocken, PA

About The Position

Lead the operational strategy and day-to-day execution for the Salesforce platform to ensure reliability, performance, security, and scalable delivery of business value. This role partners across IT and business leadership to mature platform governance, drive continuous improvement, manage vendor/partner performance, and lead a cross-functional team supporting Salesforce products and services.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business, or related field, or equivalent work experience.
Typically 10+ years in IT with progressive responsibility; 5+ years in leadership roles preferred.
Demonstrated experience operating and scaling enterprise SaaS platforms, with significant experience in Salesforce (Sales/Service/Experience Cloud, Platform, integrations).
Experience with service management practices (ITIL-aligned), operational governance, and cross-functional delivery.
Budget and vendor management experience preferred (including managed services and licensing).
Strong leadership and stakeholder management skills; able to influence across IT and business organizations.
Deep understanding of platform operations disciplines (reliability, incident/problem/change, release readiness, monitoring/observability, capacity planning).
Working knowledge of Salesforce ecosystem and operational considerations (org/environment strategy, security model, integrations, CI/CD, data governance).
Familiarity with Agile / SAFe principles and the ability to operate effectively in a product-centric model.
Strong analytical, prioritization, and decision-making skills; able to communicate status and escalate risks with sound judgment.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills; comfortable presenting to executive audiences.
Proven ability to drive continuous improvement, automation, and process standardization.
Strong organizational skills and ability to meet commitments in a fast-moving environment.
Bachelor's degree in information technology, computer science, information systems, business administration, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience required.
10+ years of experience in IT operations, enterprise infrastructure management, technology service delivery, or a related field required.
5+ years of experience in a managerial capacity required.

Nice To Haves

Master's degree in information technology, computer science, information systems, business administration, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience preferred.
Certification in IT service management, cloud infrastructure, or a related field preferred. Examples may include ITIL Expert, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert, or equivalent role relevant certification preferred.

Responsibilities

Defines and executes the Salesforce Platform Operations strategy, aligning to enterprise IT strategy, architecture direction, and business priorities.
Partners with product owners, delivery leads, capacity planners, and business stakeholders to forecast demand, plan releases, and ensure operational readiness.
Establishes and maintains strong liaison relationships with business and IT partners to deliver effective, sustainable platform solutions.
Leads continuous improvement across operational processes (incident, problem, change, release, environments, DevOps, monitoring, and service management).
Develops business-focused concepts and recommendations, including risk, cost-benefit, roadmap impacts, technical debt prioritization, and defect/enhancement triage.
Fosters an environment of Design Thinking and operational excellence (automation-first mindset, standardization, resiliency engineering).
Develops and maintains platform roadmaps (operational maturity, tooling, monitoring, secure configuration, performance optimization) and plans for end-of-life/retirement of assets and capabilities.
Interfaces with customers/stakeholders regarding service offerings, operating model, value proposition, and onboarding processes.
In conjunction with product owners and communications partners, develops a customer communications strategy to promote awareness of platform events (maintenance, major releases, incidents, and capability launches).
Benchmarks and manages IT metrics for the Salesforce platform and operations organization.
Defines operational attributes and standards for the Salesforce platform including availability, performance, scalability, security, compliance, and recoverability.
Oversees the development and adoption of governance across environments, org strategy, identity/access, data retention, integrations, and release management.
Prioritizes and directs continuous improvement initiatives including technical debt reduction, hardening, reliability enhancements, and defect resolution.
Oversees the development of operational metrics aligned to business outcomes and KPIs (e.g., uptime, incident trends, change success rate, lead time, user experience measures).
Oversees development and negotiation of SLAs/OLAs for Salesforce services and dependent service teams.
Assesses and communicates risk across the platform lifecycle; recommends and directs mitigation plans (security vulnerabilities, performance constraints, release risks, vendor risks, resiliency gaps).
Defines and directs interactions with governance, audit, compliance, security, and quality teams.
Removes technical and functional roadblocks across teams, coordinating with architecture, engineering, shared services, and other platform/product teams to resolve dependencies.
Manages the cost to run the Salesforce platform including licenses, managed services, tools, environments, and platform-related services.
Identifies cost optimization opportunities and drives efficient consumption (license governance, environment strategy, automation, tooling rationalization).
May perform profit & loss / chargeback analysis where applicable.
Negotiates cost allocation for shared services and enterprise capabilities tied to Salesforce operations.
Ensures cost effectiveness while maintaining appropriate service levels and risk posture.
Identifies/approves procurement needs for new operational capabilities (monitoring, automation, security tools, sandbox strategy, CI/CD, backup/restore).
Identifies assets/tools/services that are obsolete and drives retirement planning.
Documents improvement plans based on current deployment, performance, and operational maturity gaps.
Establishes and drives platform operational excellence across: Incident, Problem, and Change Management, Release/Deployment operational readiness, Environment management and capacity planning, Monitoring/alerting and observability, Business continuity, backup/restore, and disaster recovery (as applicable).
Leads internal continuous improvement review meetings focused on reliability and customer experience.
Ensures performance meets KPI, SLA, and OLA requirements; develops and maintains dashboards/scorecards to measure outcomes and identify chronic problems.
Regularly reviews platform value realization against business and IT strategy.
Serves as a primary escalation point for high severity issues; coordinates recovery and resolution and ensures timely root cause analysis and follow-up actions.
In coordination with the Vendor Management Office (VMO), manages vendor and partner performance to ensure outcomes align to expectations.
Provides input into contract development, renewals, and SOW governance.
Reviews service provider performance; escalates issues and drives remediation plans for underperformance.
Oversees contractor work and performance, including onboarding, delivery quality, and compliance with operational standards.
Responsible for people leadership and/or matrix leadership of cross-functional team members supporting Salesforce platform operations (admins, engineers, release managers, DevOps, support leads).
In collaboration with Centers of Competence, manages goals, skills development, training, and workforce planning.
Participates in Agile / SAFe ways of working to reduce risk and coordinate interdependencies with other product trains.
Coaches and mentors team members; models strong communication, conflict resolution, and a sense of urgency.
May directly contribute when needed (e.g., operational playbooks, acceptance criteria, governance standards, escalation support).
Other duties as assigned.

Benefits

medical
dental
vision care
comprehensive suite of benefits that focus on the physical, emotional, financial, and social aspects of wellness
support for working families
backup dependent care
adoption assistance
infertility coverage
family building support
behavioral health solutions
paid parental leave
paid caregiver leave
variety of training programs
professional development resources
opportunities to participate in mentorship programs
employee resource groups
volunteer activities