The title Salesforce Architect often feels intimidating. It sounds senior, complex, and reserved for people with decades of experience. But in reality, architecture isn’t about titles or diagrams—it’s about how you think when designing systems that real people rely on every day.
Over the years, many Salesforce professionals transition from building features to designing systems. That shift doesn’t happen overnight. It happens through experience, mistakes, and a gradual change in mindset.
This article explores what it truly means to think like a Salesforce architect, offering practical lessons from real-world examples rather than just theoretical concepts.
Here are a few things that changed in how I think:
Table of Contents
Start With the Customer Journey, Not the Objects
In many Salesforce implementations, conversations begin with data models:
“We need a Job object.”
“We need a Candidate object.”
“We need a Placement object.”
Objects are important—but they’re not the starting point.
Architectural thinking begins by asking how people actually move through the system:
- How does a candidate go from “found on LinkedIn” to “placed and paid”?
- How does a client move from the first call to signed terms to repeat business?
- Where do handoffs occur?
- Where do delays, errors, or confusion usually happen?
Only after understanding these journeys does it make sense to decide:
- Where records should live
- How objects should relate
- Which automation belongs where
When you design from the journey outward, your data model supports the business rather than making the business adapt to the data model.
Design for Real Life, Not Just the Demo
It’s easy to create a Salesforce demo that looks impressive. It’s much harder to build something that survives a real Monday morning.
In production environments:
- Data is messy
- Users are busy and under pressure
- Integrations slow down or fail
- Edge cases show up unexpectedly
Strong architecture protects the system from these realities. That means:
- Clear guardrails in automation
- Thoughtful error handling and monitoring
- Simple, opinionated user experiences instead of multiple ways to do the same task
Good architecture isn’t flashy. It’s reliable, predictable, and resilient when things don’t go as planned.
Treat Platform Constraints as Design Signals
Early in a Salesforce career, platform limits can feel frustrating:
- API limits
- Governor limits
- Sharing and visibility restrictions
Over time, experienced architects learn to see these constraints differently.
Limits force better design:
- API limits encourage batching and volume-aware integrations
- Sharing rules force clarity around who actually needs access to data
- Governor limits the push for efficient automation and scalable code
Salesforce constraints are not obstacles—they are guardrails. The best architectures are created by working with the platform, not trying to fight it.
Building products, not just projects
Over the years, I transitioned from working on internal projects to developing solutions as a Salesforce consultancy and eventually founded JSBC Labs, creating our own products, such as RecruitLab.
That introduced a new dimension: multi-tenant thinking.
You’re no longer designing for “this one customer in this one org. You’re designing for:
- Different data models
- Different processes
- Different levels of maturity
- Security review and packaging constraints
It forces you to ask tougher questions:
- How do we make this configurable without making it confusing?
- Which parts belong in the managed package, which belong in the customer org?
- How do we keep upgrades safe for everyone?
It’s humbling. Every clever shortcut you took in a single org comes back to haunt you when you’re packaging for many.
What I wish I’d learned earlier
If you’re early in your Salesforce journey and you’d like to head toward architecture, here are a few things I wish someone had told me:
Learn the platform depth first
It’s tempting to jump straight into every new cloud and acronym. Slow down.
Truly master:
- Core data modelling and security
- Automation patterns (and their limits)
- Integration basics (APIs, events, async processing)
These fundamentals outlast any one release.
Sit with users, A lot
Some of my best design decisions didn’t come from documentation; they came from watching someone:
- Tab between five systems
- Screenshot data because they didn’t trust reports
- Work around a process that “wasn’t built for how we actually do it.”
Architects who spend time in the field build better systems. It’s that simple.
Own your mistakes in public
I’ve broken things. Everyone has.
The difference is whether you quietly patch it and hope nobody notices, or you:
- Explain what happened
- Show what you’ve changed
- Use it as a lesson for your team
Trust is a major part of the architect’s role. Admitting when you got it wrong actually builds that trust.
Why I still enjoy this work, almost twenty years later
The Salesforce ecosystem has changed a lot since I started:
- We’ve gone from simple workflows to complex orchestration and AI
- From single-org implementations to multi-cloud, multi-region architectures
- From “can we put this in the cloud?” to “how do we stay ahead of what the platform can do?”
What hasn’t changed is the core of the job:
- Listen carefully
- Design thoughtfully
- Protect the long-term health of the system
- Make life easier for the humans who rely on it every day
That’s still what gets me out of bed.
Closing thoughts
With almost two decades within the Salesforce ecosystem, I’ve worn a lot of badges: admin, consultant, developer, architect, and founder. The label matters less than the mindset.
If you’re at the start of your journey, here’s my encouragement:
- Say yes to problems you don’t yet know how to solve
- Stay curious about how the business actually works
- Treat every build as something future-you will have to maintain
Do that consistently, and one day you’ll look up and realise you’re doing the work of an architect—title or not.
Then the badge just becomes a formality.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
A Salesforce architect designs solutions that scale, stay secure, and support long-term business goals. Instead of focusing on individual features, they think about the full system—data model, security, automation, integrations, and user experience—ensuring everything works together reliably as the org grows.
A Salesforce developer focuses on building functionality like Apex code, Lightning components, and automations. A Salesforce architect focuses on design decisions, how components fit together, how data flows, how limits are handled, and how changes today affect the system years from now.
Salesforce architects think in terms of journeys, not just objects. They start with how users and customers move through processes, anticipate real-world issues like bad data or slow integrations, and design systems that remain stable under pressure.
Architecture should be considered from day one, even for small projects. Early design decisions around data modeling, security, and automation often determine whether a system scales smoothly or becomes difficult to maintain later.
Key skills include deep knowledge of Salesforce data modeling and security, a strong understanding of automation patterns, integration fundamentals, and the ability to translate business needs into technical designs. Equally important are communication, user empathy, and long-term thinking.
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Jay Slinger
With almost two decades within the Salesforce ecosystem, I’ve worked my way from hands-on admin and consultant roles to Salesforce Architect and founder of JSBC Labs. I specialise in designing scalable, real-world solutions for recruitment and high-growth businesses, turning complex requirements into simple, usable experiences that teams actually love to work in.