8 Expert Career Tips for Senior Salesforce Professionals to Level Up

If you’re anything like I am, you’ve probably been around the block for a little while. You’ve battled demanding users, survived the trenches with multiple different teams, and have probably lost as many battles as you’ve won. So, you know the complexities and demands of this ever-evolving ecosystem. To remain impactful and relevant in this space requires ongoing refinement of your skills and strategies – you have to clean your armor and sharpen your weapons.

Whilst all of that was pretty metaphorical, here are some thoughtful tips to help you stay ahead in 2025 and beyond. Each tip will be actionable – outlining what skills you will learn, why they matter, and providing an example you can try yourself. These examples are exactly that: examples. Feel free to come up with your own instead.

1. Deep Dive Into DevOps and Release Management

• Actionable Tip: Learn how to establish a structured process to test new features in a sandbox environment and roll them out strategically to relevant teams. Incorporate Salesforce DX tools to modernize app development and lifecycle management. Experiment and learn how to implement CI/CD pipelines to automate testing and deployment for more efficient and reliable releases.
• Skills: Proficiency with Salesforce DX, familiarity with sandboxes and scratch orgs for isolated testing, experience with CI/CD tools (e.g. Gearset, Copado, AutoRabit, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Bitbucket pipelines and/or others), and knowledge of version control systems (like Git). Gain competency with deployment tools outside of Change Sets and learn how these tools use the Metadata API to manage metadata migrations effectively.
• Why It Matters: A strong release management framework reduces risks, ensures system stability, and enables timely delivery of features. Learning how to automate these processes broadens your horizons, frees up your/your team’s time in the long run, and makes you more efficient. You need to understand how to release often and securely to ensure you drive value at a certain velocity. 
• Example: Use Salesforce DX to create scratch orgs for testing new Flows, track code changes with Git, and deploy seamlessly using a CI/CD pipeline integrated with Jenkins or GitHub Actions.

2. Transition from Technical to Business Strategist

• Actionable Tip: Collaborate with key stakeholders in the organization you work for to align Salesforce capabilities with overarching business goals. Use tools like Lucidchart or Visio for business process mapping and data modelling to provide clarity and alignment. Enhance your skills in requirement gathering and ROI analysis to connect technical efforts with tangible outcomes. If you’re currently not working, use a business that you are familiar with. Pick an industry (let’s say ‘Banking/Financial Services’) and re-design the mortgage application process, for example. 
• Skills: Roadmap creation, business analysis, data modelling, requirement gathering, and financial evaluation.
• Why It Matters: Shifting from a purely technical focus to a strategic one strengthens your position as a trusted advisor. It ensures your work directly contributes to business objectives, fostering stakeholder confidence. You have to not just understand the technology, but you have to have a deep understanding of how it impacts the business and what value it delivers.
• Example: Develop a Salesforce roadmap with milestones for optimizing lead management, demonstrating how these changes can save 30% of manual effort and improve lead conversion rates. This will require you to understand and create a baseline, so you can measure the improvement. You’ll need to speak to stakeholders to understand their current process, pain points, and map these to solutions to deliver value.

3. Develop Junior Talent Through Hands-On Projects

• Actionable Tip: Assign mentees specific mini-projects, allowing them to take ownership while you provide structured guidance. Introduce tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams to streamline communication and foster collaboration. Create opportunities for them to shadow more complex tasks to build context and confidence. 
• Skills: Mentorship, project scoping, constructive feedback, leadership, and task delegation.
• Why It Matters: Supporting junior talent ensures a steady transfer of knowledge and builds a resilient team. It also positions you as an effective leader who invests in the professional growth of others. It’s easy to fall into the trap of ‘it will be quicker if I do it myself’, but those juniors will never grow. And if there’s one thing we’re lacking in the workforce globally right now, it’s opportunities for juniors to learn on the job and be mentored properly. Businesses are all looking for experienced hires. If you get a chance, provide that opportunity for someone to gain experience and learn from you.
• Example: Mentor a junior admin through the process of creating an automated alert system for missed follow-ups. Encourage iterative problem-solving, provide feedback on their logic, and have them present their solution to stakeholders to refine their communication skills.

4. Specialize With a Niche Certification

• Actionable Tip: Pursue advanced certifications like Omnistudio Consultant, Marketing Cloud Developer, or Tableau CRM that align with your organization’s focus. Complement your certification with practical projects to embed the theoretical knowledge you gained from preparing for this certification. 
• Skills: Mastery of niche Salesforce tools, hands-on experience in specialized problem-solving, and strategic application of new skills.
• Why It Matters: Becoming a subject matter expert in a specific area distinguishes you from generalists. It also enhances your ability to deliver value in high-demand domains. This is becoming more important as time goes on. Become the Integration Guru, the DevOps Commander, and the Marketing Cloud Magician. Specialize and it will provide you with opportunities in the long run. 
• Example: Earn a Tableau CRM certification and design dashboards that provide actionable sales insights, boosting forecasting accuracy by 20%. Present these dashboards to key stakeholders to solidify your expertise.

5. Build an Industry-Specific Network

• Actionable Tip: Engage in forums and LinkedIn groups specific to your sector (e.g. healthcare, finance). Actively participate in discussions and attend industry events to expand your professional circle and gain sector-specific insights.
• Skills: Networking, industry expertise, and relationship management.
• Why It Matters: An industry-focused network not only broadens your perspective but also provides access to collaborative opportunities and niche insights that enhance your professional relevance. In addition, industries use multiple technologies. Just because you are a DevOps master using SalesforceDX doesn’t mean you can’t learn something from someone else deploying on AWS using Terraform. Perhaps there are principles and practices that will make you better and improve your process. Expand your horizons. 
• Example: Attend a healthcare-focused conference and engage with other professionals to discuss best practices for implementing Healthcare solutions. This could lead to a joint initiative or knowledge-sharing opportunity where you can learn how to best configure and customize Health Cloud further with ideas from other solutions.

6. Understand Big Data Ecosystems and Salesforce’s Role

• Actionable Tip: Learn how Salesforce integrates with tools like Snowflake, Google BigQuery, or Amazon Redshift. Familiarize yourself with ETL processes using platforms like MuleSoft, Informatica, or Talend. Explore Salesforce Data Cloud for real-time insights and data enrichment.
• Skills: Proficiency in big data tools, ETL processes, data governance, and reporting with Tableau or Power BI.
• Why It Matters: Understanding how Salesforce contributes to broader data ecosystems enables you to support data-driven decisions and align with organizational objectives. Whilst we like to believe Salesforce is the center of the technology universe, it would be fairer to say that on most technology landscape diagrams, Salesforce sits somewhere on the edges. We’re all feeding data into data platforms and understanding how your Salesforce data impacts enterprise reporting and other systems will help you better design your solutions and data models. 
• Example: Build a data pipeline between Salesforce and Snowflake using MuleSoft. This integration provides real-time engagement metrics that empower marketing teams to refine campaign strategies effectively.

7. Enhance Coding and Programming Skills

• Actionable Tip: Refine your abilities in Apex, Lightning Web Components, and JavaScript for customization and automation. Use tools like SonarQube to ensure clean, maintainable code. Expand into Python or R for advanced analytics and integrations. 
• Skills: Advanced programming, API development, debugging, and lifecycle management.
• Why It Matters: Proficiency in coding ensures you can address complex business requirements and optimize system performance. It also reduces dependency on external resources. These days, it’s no longer enough to just know when to use low-code versus programmatic solutions. You may have to implement some programmatic solutions yourself. And whilst vibe coding is all the rage at the moment, I’d still recommend you learn from the ground up, start from the basics, and progress from there. 
• Example: Develop a custom integration between Salesforce and Tableau using REST APIs to visualise real-time sales trends. This provides executives with actionable insights that drive strategic decisions.

8. Build a Personal Brand in the Salesforce Community

• Actionable Tip: Share detailed case studies or tutorials on LinkedIn, Medium, or the Trailblazer Community. Engage in webinars and podcasts, or create a YouTube channel to share insights and establish yourself as a thought leader.
• Skills: Content creation, public speaking, and online engagement.
• Why It Matters: A strong personal brand amplifies your professional visibility and opens opportunities for collaboration, speaking engagements, or career advancement. As we said, you’ve sat in the trenches and gained all this knowledge and experience. But will you be just one in a million, or will people see your value through your personal brand? You don’t have to go overboard, but it adds so much value when those you meet or your prospective clients/employers have heard of you (positively) before they even look at your CV. 
• Example: Write a blog on how you implemented a complex CPQ solution that improved deal closure rates by 25%. This not only garners recognition but could also lead to invitations to speak at Salesforce events.

Summary

Look, it isn’t easy, I know. None of us have the time we all would like to have. You’ve worked hard and built up your career as a senior professional. But in today’s world, you need a little more. You need a blend of technical expertise, strategic thinking, and proactive learning. 

By focusing on these areas, you can ensure continued growth, make meaningful contributions, and solidify your position as a leader in the ecosystem. Make yourself stand out.