Salesforce Solution Architect

City Year

2d

About The Position

The Salesforce Solution Architect is responsible for the health, security, and stewardship of City Year’s Salesforce ecosystem, ensuring that platform functionality meets evolving business needs and maximizes the value of Salesforce. This collaborative position combines hands-on technical support with strategic planning, roadmap development, and project leadership. It is part of the ITS Enterprise Applications Team and reports to the Director of Enterprise Applications. The role’s location is flexible, but the employee must reside and work in the United States.

The architect leads the architectural, strategic, and technical management of three Salesforce environments: a Constituent System using Sales Cloud with NPSP; a Service Desk built on Experience Cloud; and a Student Data System using a customized Sales Cloud implementation with an unmanaged package. The role defines future-state architecture and roadmaps; maintains system health, security, integrations, and operations; leads responses to major outages; and oversees system improvements and projects with internal stakeholders and vendors. It also develops strategic partnerships, manages vendor relationships and licensing, supports end users and reporting, and mentors a Salesforce Business Systems Manager.

City Year is a nonprofit organization that partners with public schools in high-need communities. Its AmeriCorps members serve as tutors, mentors, and role models, supporting students’ academic progress and overall success. The organization operates in communities across the United States and has international affiliates in South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience.
• 8–10 years of relevant technical experience.
• At least 5 years of experience working with the Salesforce platform.
• Salesforce Administrator certification required.
• Experience and certifications implementing Agentforce, Flows, and automations.
• Understanding of systems architecture, APIs, and integration best practices.
• Understanding of software development lifecycle practices using Agile methodologies and requirements for maintaining systems in a regulated environment.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Ability to mentor team members in technology, architecture, and application delivery.
• Successful teamwork experience and demonstrated leadership abilities.
• Ability to transfer knowledge and stay aware of current trends and technical advancements.
• Ability to articulate and present different points of view on technologies.
• Ability to understand complex challenges, analyze potential paths forward, and recommend a course of action.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively, prioritize, take initiative, and lead multiple projects in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment.
• Strong follow-through, attention to detail, self-motivation, organization, and commitment to high-quality solutions.
• Ability to communicate credibly and empathetically with customers and colleagues, including in a remote working situation.
• Customer-service orientation, with an empathetic approach to understanding needs and delivering solutions that support customer satisfaction.
• Commitment to continuous improvement and City Year’s mission; collaborative approach with ITS and organizational business partners.
• Must reside and work in the United States. City Year does not sponsor work authorization visas.

Nice To Haves

• NPSP or Non-Profit Cloud experience.
• Salesforce architecture-level certifications.
• Familiarity with Salesforce as a fundraising platform.
• Familiarity with Salesforce mobile applications.
• Experience with Agile.

Responsibilities

• Define and document flexible, scalable, robust future-state Salesforce architecture; identify gaps and develop roadmaps with product owners.
• Maintain the health, security, maintenance, and ongoing improvement of Salesforce platforms and third-party applications.
• Determine strategies for maintaining and improving Salesforce interfaces with systems including Single Sign-on, Workday, Marketo, iWave, student assessment systems, GoFundMe Pro, Apsona, Own Backup and Archive, and Azure; maintain or build interfaces as needed.
• Prepare for and perform recurring operational tasks and annual activities with functional leaders, including Salesforce releases.
• Lead responses to major service degradations or outages, identify root causes, resolve issues, follow up with customers, and define preventive changes.
• Organize and oversee the technical work of a Salesforce Business Systems Manager, including mentoring in Salesforce skills and expertise.
• Work with functional leaders and end users to support business needs and improvements through Salesforce systems.
• Assess enhancement effort, roadmap priority, capacity, cost, and timing in relation to other initiatives.
• Improve Salesforce systems by identifying solutions, engaging stakeholders and vendors, building key solution components, testing and overseeing validation, and supervising deployment according to technology best practices.
• Implement strategic projects, system enhancements, and point releases with functional leaders and external vendor partners.
• Build strategic relationships with internal partners and users to understand technology needs and work practices.
• Translate functional owners’ requirements into designs, development approaches, and implementation plans, bridging functional and technical teams.
• Lead Salesforce partnership discussions and the annual system renewal and license-needs assessment with ITS leadership support.
• Oversee vendors responsible for system maintenance and support, including contracts, licensing, and costs.
• Participate in user groups and forums, learn from peers, and represent City Year’s Salesforce expertise.
• Ensure end-user questions and issues are handled with a customer-first mindset and in accordance with service-level agreements.
• Review Salesforce service-level metrics, identify strengths and pain points, and facilitate improvements.
• Support users in building custom reports and maintain report security and sharing strategy.
• Comply with and help enforce standard policies and security procedures.
• Communicate effectively and empathetically, advocate for changes and their business value, and address other Salesforce-related service and operational issues as needed.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits including health insurance, vacation days, holidays, parental leave, and a 401(k) plan.
• Vacation, sick days, and organization holidays for full-time employees.
• Medical, dental, vision, life, accidental death and dismemberment, and disability coverage.
• Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA).
• Other benefits and 401(k) plan(s), subject to company policy and plan documents.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior