Get to Know the Salesforce Developer Role
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe what Salesforce developers do.
- Identify the skills of a successful Salesforce developer.
What’s a Salesforce Developer?
A Salesforce developer knows how to build solutions for a concrete enterprise business problem using Salesforce technologies. They can analyze and understand business requirements, and choose the best solution from low-code and code Salesforce technologies. They use these technologies to build high-quality solutions that perform well in a cloud environment and integrate with external systems.
So what skills do you need to be a successful developer? Let’s take a look.
Required Skills
Successful Salesforce developers have a combination of technical skills and soft skills. Whether you’re looking to build your skillset or advance your career, we’ve compiled the most in-demand developer skills.
Key technical skills include:
- Low-code automation
- Data modeling
- Programming languages
- Unit testing
- Design patterns
- APIs and integration
- DevOps and CI/CD
- Agile Methodologies
Soft skills include:
- Capacity to analyze and understand business requirements
- Ability to select the best technologies from those available, given a concrete business problem
- Interpersonal communication skills, to communicate smoothly with all the actors involved in the different development stages
- Enthusiasm for building performant, high-quality solutions that perform well and can scale in a cloud environment
- Learning and innovation skills, to cope with the speed at which Salesforce delivers new features
Common Developer Roles and Responsibilities
| Salesforce Developer Type | What They Do |
|---|---|
|
Salesforce Platform Developer |
Customizes and extends the Salesforce Platform (including Sales and Service Cloud) using low-code tools, and programming languages such as JavaScript (Lightning Web Components) and Apex, when the solution involves more complex logic or user interfaces. Builds consumer facing sites and in-house products using Salesforce Platform core technologies and web stack knowledge on Experience Cloud. Builds solutions using different open-source languages running on Salesforce Functions or Heroku. |
|
Commerce Cloud Developer |
Builds shopping experiences using commerce APIs and their web framework of choice, such as React, or with Experience Cloud. |
|
Marketing Cloud Developer |
Automates marketing business use cases using REST APIs, SDKs (for different languages, iOS and Android), and AMPScript. |
|
Slack Developer |
Extends Slack functionality by creating apps in Java, JavaScript, or Python, using Bolt. When Slack apps integrate with Salesforce, they are created using the Apex SDK for Slack. |
|
MuleSoft Developer |
Leads the design, test, implementation, and deployment of APIs and integration projects. They cover these API lifecycle steps by using different tools, including low-code tools and code tools like DataWeave or Java. |
|
Tableau Developer |
Builds workflows and custom connectors to integrate any data using SDKs and APIs. Integrates Tableau into other apps using JavaScript, or with advanced models in R, Python, MATLAB, and more. |
Find the Right Developer Role for You
Ready to make the most of a career as a Salesforce developer? Check out the different developer roles on Trailhead’s Developer Career Path where you can find learning content for every role. Then, join the Salesforce Developer group on the Trailblazer Community and become a Salesforce developer rockstar.