Principal Enterprise Salesforce Platform Architect

Avalara

About The Position

Salesforce is a foundational platform powering Avalara’s revenue engine, customer experience, and operational workflows across Sales, Service, Marketing, and Quote-to-Cash. As Avalara scales its product portfolio, expands into new markets, and embeds AI across customer and operational systems, the complexity and criticality of the Salesforce ecosystem continues to grow. The Principal Salesforce Platform Architect defines and governs the enterprise architecture strategy for Salesforce, ensuring the platform operates as a scalable, coherent system rather than a collection of independent implementations. This role establishes the roadmap, standards, and design patterns that guide all Salesforce development and integration across the enterprise. By aligning Salesforce architecture to business outcomes and enterprise priorities, this role ensures the platform supports predictable revenue operations, high-quality customer experiences, and efficient, AI-enabled execution at scale.

Requirements

B.S. in Computer Science or Engineering
12+ years of experience in enterprise systems architecture, including Salesforce platform architecture
Deep expertise in Salesforce ecosystem (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, platform capabilities)
Experience defining platform standards, data models, and integration architectures
Experience working with enterprise data platforms, integration layers, and AI-enabled workflows
Strong understanding of revenue operations, customer lifecycle, and enterprise system design
Proven ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders and drive enterprise-wide architectural decisions
Experience using AI and AI-related technologies
Ability to apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.
Curiosity about new trends and best practices in AI, and willingness to share knowledge.

Nice To Haves

Salesforce architecture strategy and roadmap formally adopted across domains
Reduction in redundant customizations and overlapping platform capabilities
Measurable improvement in platform stability, scalability, and delivery consistency
Clear and reusable integration patterns adopted by delivery teams
AI-enabled Salesforce workflows deployed with measurable business impact
Positive stakeholder feedback from Sales, RevOps, and Customer Experience leadership
Demonstrate applied AI capability within Salesforce and related workflows
Identify and implement AI use cases that improve measurable outcomes (conversion, productivity, resolution time)
Ensure AI solutions are explainable, secure, and aligned to enterprise governance
Quantify AI impact (time saved, efficiency gains, revenue influence)
Elevate AI capability across platform and delivery teams

Responsibilities

Define and maintain the enterprise Salesforce architecture strategy and roadmap
Establish platform guardrails, design principles, and capability models
Ensure Salesforce architecture aligns with Lead-to-Sale, Q2C, and Customer Experience strategies
Partner with Enterprise Architects to align platform strategy with business capability roadmaps
Define and enforce standards for: Data models, Object design, Integration patterns, Security and access controls, Environment and release management
Establish reusable design patterns to reduce custom development and improve scalability
Lead architecture reviews for Salesforce-related initiatives
Guide Solution Architects and delivery teams in applying Salesforce architecture standards
Ensure consistency of system design across delivery pods
Translate architecture runway into actionable guidance for development teams
Reduce rework by ensuring design alignment early in delivery cycles
Define integration patterns between Salesforce and: Billing and finance systems, Product and usage platforms, Customer Data Platform (CDP), Support and CX systems
Ensure Salesforce participates as a governed component of the enterprise data architecture
Align Salesforce data models with Customer360 / CX360 strategies
Define how AI capabilities (Einstein, external AI platforms, CDP-driven signals) are embedded into Salesforce workflows
Enable AI-driven use cases such as: Lead and opportunity scoring, Sales prioritization, Case routing and support automation, Customer insight and recommendations
Ensure AI implementations are explainable, governed, and aligned to enterprise standards
Identify and eliminate redundant functionality across Salesforce and adjacent tools
Reduce customization complexity and improve maintainability
Drive consolidation of overlapping capabilities into scalable platform solutions
Serve as the enterprise authority for Salesforce architecture
Partner with: Marketing, Sales, RevOps, Finance and Q2C teams, Customer Experience and Support, Data & AI platform teams
Raise architecture maturity across delivery teams and stakeholders
Participate in enterprise architecture governance forums