Is the Salesforce Admin Role a Destination or a Stepping Stone?

As the Salesforce platform continues to mature – adding AI-driven features, new products, and increasingly powerful automation – the role of the standard Salesforce Admin continues to evolve. While one can argue that being an admin is a critical, full‑fledged career in its own right (owning platform strategy, user experience, and day‑to‑day operations), it also serves as the perfect launchpad, giving you the hands‑on foundation to spring into more specialized roles like developer or architect.

Because the admin role offers such a strong foundation while being so versatile and flexible, a crucial question looms large: is being an admin the career destination itself, or merely a springboard to other technical roles? The SF Ben Salesforce Admin Survey provides rich insights that help answer this debate.

Why Some Admins View It as a Destination

While often seen as a starting point, the admin role offers so much depth and impact that many professionals choose to stay and grow within it.

High Career Satisfaction

The admin role is often framed as an entry-level position, but that doesn’t do justice to its depth. For many, being a Salesforce admin becomes a destination due to much growth happens through hands-on experience. 76% of respondents feel a “high” career satisfaction in their admin role, showing how deeply engaged they are with day-to-day work, despite mounting expectations.

Admins are constantly exposed to a vast scope of real-world problems, which range from resolving bugs, rolling out automation, handling security, and even supporting users across departments. Each task sharpens your problem-solving skills and deepens your understanding of business processes, so the learning curve becomes pretty steep. Even so, it comes with a nice reward: a richly satisfying career for those who love variety and impact. 

Increasingly Strategic Responsibilities

Yes, admins are considered “declarative developers”, but they aren’t just checkbox clickers. With 64.7% agreeing that Salesforce is becoming more complex to work with, the role has naturally evolved beyond simple page layouts and field creation. Modern admins are expected to design Flows that control critical automation, build scalable permission structures, manage cross-cloud features, or even take the lead on AI pilot projects within their orgs.

Salesforce continues to introduce increasingly complex features with every release, and with that, the responsibilities of an admin become more and more strategic. One of the main reasons administrators can see the role as a goal rather than a stepping stone is because of its expanding scope. 

There is a constant stream of possibilities to learn, contribute more, and influence the company’s performance. There are always new skill sets needed and new responsibilities that must be fulfilled. It’s not a static position – it evolves with the platform, and for many, that’s exactly what makes it worth staying in.

Room to Grow (Without Leaving the Role)

For some admins, the idea that they need to “graduate” into other roles to advance their careers isn’t the reality. There is a lot of opportunity for advancement in the admin position itself, especially as the platform continues to evolve. As admin skills continue to expand, new areas of responsibility like product management, change enablement, and security design are recognized. At the same time, 71.5% of admins are already using AI tools, demonstrating that admins are not just adopting new technology, but also leading its uptake.

This variety is exactly what makes the Admin role a career destination. You can become a subject matter expert, take charge of more strategic projects, and continuously upskill even while remaining anchored in a position that affects almost every corner of the company.

Why Many See It as a Stepping Stone

While many find long-term fulfillment as admins, others see it as a launchpad, using the role to build experience before branching into more technical or specialized paths.

Desire for New Challenges

When asked about their next dream role, 19.8% of Admins picked Solution Architect, 11.2% picked Developer, and 8.2% picked Technical Architect. That adds up to nearly 40% of respondents looking beyond the admin title. This highlights a pretty strong appetite for progression into more specialized, technically advanced, or strategically focused roles.

As humans, we’re wired to seek out new challenges once we’ve developed confidence in our current abilities. The same is true for many admins – mastering declarative tools leads to a natural curiosity about what else is possible. 

That curiosity often pulls them toward coding, more complex system architecture, or the opportunity to influence technical strategy at a higher level.

Career Mobility

Around 66.5% of Admins have 2–10 years of experience, and this mid-career phase usually turns into a key turning point. At this stage, many Admins have already built a strong foundation, mastering core features, leading projects, and solving real business problems. 

It is when they start to reassess what growth looks like going forward. For some, this growth can mean deepening their expertise within the admin role by specializing in other areas like security, analytics, or AI. 

But for others, it’s the moment they decide to pursue a new challenge altogether, potentially branching into more focused branches like developer, architect, or consultant/business analyst roles.

“Too Much Is Expected”

53% of admins agree that “too much is expected” of their role. It’s common for the typical Salesforce admin to be pulled in multiple directions, causing them to have to juggle various responsibilities; everything from duplicate data clean-ups and quarterly release reviews to strategic projects. For some, this constant context-switching can lead to burnout, fueling a desire for more focused responsibilities. 

While roles like developer or architect may come with greater technical expectations, they often offer a narrower scope, allowing people to dive deeper into one area instead of trying to manage a bunch of different things. That shift in focus can be a big motivator for admins seeking more structure and clarity in their day-to-day work.

Skill and Confidence Gaps

This point closely ties into the idea that too much is often expected of admins. Because they’re often required to be a “jack of all trades”, it can be difficult to gain deep mastery in any one area. The constant need to “do it all” leaves little room to specialize, which can impact confidence over time.

Even though admins feel pretty good about their core declarative tools, scoring an average of 3.8 out of 5, there is lower confidence in more technical areas. For instance, just 2.7/5 in programmatic tools, 32.4% in Salesforce AI features, and 33% in DevOps Center. 

These gaps don’t really reflect a lack of potential; it’s more about not having enough time, training, or support, and for some Admins, this is enough to push the move into a more focused role. 

Final Thoughts 

At the end of the day, it is still up to the person whether being in the admin position is a destination or a stepping stone. Some people find it to be a rewarding long-term profession because of the constantly changing tasks, strategic effect, and ongoing exposure to new tools. For others, it serves as a springboard and a fantastic setup for developing fundamental abilities before entering a more technical or specialized role. 

The SF Ben Salesforce Admin Survey makes it evident that admins are indeed at the center of the ecosystem, and the range of career options that arise from this position is as varied as the professionals themselves.