Salesforce Principal

Ness Digital Engineering•New York, NY

13d

About The Position

A Salesforce Principal at Ness is the most senior practitioner on an engagement. You own how the solution is shaped and how it gets delivered — from the requirement baseline that defines what we build, through the design and the impact assessment, to the working software the client signs off. You are the person the client’s sponsors deal with and the person the squad looks to when the picture is incomplete. This is a hands-on role. Senior practitioners here establish the framework rather than execute inside someone else’s. You will lead the work and you will also do some of it, particularly the parts that decide whether the rest is right.

Requirements

Twelve years or more in enterprise business systems, with six or more delivering Salesforce and at least three as the most senior practitioner on an engagement rather than a contributor to one.
Deep Sales Cloud, and direct hands-on experience of Revenue Lifecycle Management or CPQ — quoting, pricing, approvals, contracts and the path to order.
Delivered change inside a large, mature, heavily customised org — one with competing regional configurations, real technical debt and automation nobody fully remembers building — without breaking what was already there.
Led a squad through agile delivery: sprints, ceremonies, a groomed backlog and user stories with acceptance criteria a developer can build from without asking what you meant.
Credible in front of a client sponsor group and can hold a position with a VP who disagrees with you.
Salesforce certifications: Administrator and Sales Cloud Consultant as a baseline.
Read an org’s metadata and establish what a proposed change actually touches — flows, Apex, triggers, approval processes, record types, page layouts, permission sets and integrations.
Design for a multi-region org where regions share objects, automation and picklists, and where a change made for one region reaches another unless it is deliberately contained.
Work in VS Code with the Salesforce CLI, or get there quickly. Where a piece of analysis needs a tool you have not used, find the tool and learn it rather than reporting that the analysis cannot be done.
Use AI tooling well and sceptically — as an accelerator whose output you verify, not as an answer you forward.
Take ownership without being asked. Identify what is needed, plan it and drive it.
Raise problems early. When something is going wrong say so while it can still be fixed, and bring a proposed way forward with it.
Answer the question you were asked. Directly, and with a time attached when the answer is not yet available.
Check before you assert. Do not present something as new until you have confirmed it is not already known.
Comfortable being the most accountable person in the room, including when the news is bad and the client is unhappy.
Develop the people around you. Explain why, not only what, because that is how a junior becomes someone the practice can rely on.

Nice To Haves

Revenue Cloud, Advanced Administrator or an Architect-track certification is a strong advantage.

Responsibilities

Own the design: Data model, automation, security model, integration boundaries and the sequencing of change in an org that is already carrying years of accumulated build.
Own the requirement baseline: Ensure every engagement runs from a single traceable requirement set, that each requirement carries the source it came from, nothing is presented as new until it has been checked against what already exists, and the client can always see what we are building and why.
Own impact and risk: Know what breaks when you change something, and say so before it breaks. Produce impact assessments that an experienced client architect will accept, and defend them.
Own the client relationship: Act as the delivery lead the client deals with day to day, including at VP and sponsor level. Set expectations before they have to ask, and bring problems forward with a proposed way through.
Own the plan: Ensure a forward plan exists, in writing, before the week it covers. Ensure sprint ceremonies run and the squad knows what it is doing and by when, and so does the client.
Own the squad: Assign the work, unblock it and raise the standard of the people doing it — several of whom will be early in their careers and will learn how to work by watching you.
Own commercial judgement: Understand what the engagement is worth and where its edges are. When something uncovered is bigger than the contract allows for, size it and put it in front of the client with a timeline rather than absorbing it quietly.
Contribute to the practice: Bring what you learn back — reusable assets, pre-sales support, and shaping how the practice delivers. Expect this to be a meaningful minority of your time, not an afterthought.