Salesforce Admin Salary Guide 2021

Salesforce Admin salaries are a hot topic, and for good reason! The Salesforce Economy is growing at such a rate that Salesforce Administrators find themselves in a favourable position, with higher average salaries than equivalent roles in other industries.

How much do Salesforce Admins earn, and how do you find out?

At SalesforceBen.com, we have been enabling Developers, Consultants and Marketers with these statistics for a number of years – but the Admin salary guide was the original one we started out with due to the consistently popular career choice as a Salesforce Admin.

This guide will bring context to what your salary should be (or could be) with information to back up that figure, so that you can be armed with ammo when asking for a raise, or applying for a new role. Let’s first look at who Salesforce Admins are before diving into the salary figures.

Who are Salesforce Admins?

– Roles and Responsibilities

There’s no doubt that Salesforce Admins are deserving of their compensation – they carry out a core function that allows organisations to maintain a healthy org, customise Salesforce using declarative (point-and-click) configuration, support the needs of users, and in turn, optimise business operations. Admins will have mastered Salesforce declarative (point-and-click) configuration (only very occasionally will Admins use programming languages, such as Apex).

An administrator in the Salesforce world is typically expected to take on a broader range of responsibilities than system administrators in other industries. The range of responsibilities of a Salesforce Admin go from the typical configuration-based tasks, through to work that requires a level of business acumen. The range of responsibilities tend to broaden with seniority but it’s not universally true. 
On top of configuration, Salesforce Admins, as they progress, can also spend their time on:

• Business Analysis (BA) work (if it’s required to accurately gather requirements),
• Solution design,
• Business process design, eg. lead qualification criteria, opportunity pipeline management,
• Feedback on reporting, eg. providing commentary on forecasting that will inform those at board level or management.

Junior vs. Mid-Level vs. Senior Salesforce Admins

For the purposes of this guide, we will use the following definitions:

• Junior Admin: 0 – 2 years experience (possibly up to 3 years). Maintaining the Salesforce org on a day to day basis, acting as the first line of support for users,
• Mid-level: 2 – 4 years experience. Maintaining a fairly complex Salesforce org (more users, a more complex sharing model, integrations and/or using less common features), customizing Salesforce using best practices,
• Senior Admin: 5+ years experience. Maintaining a complex Salesforce org, managing a team or working with external parties carrying out a number of releases per year. Have stakeholder management skills, responsible for governance.

You will find a more extensive list of responsibilities for each role later when we explore seniority in more detail (see: Experience (Seniority)).

Salesforce Administrator Salaries

The data in this section is from the Mason Frank Salary Survey, based on self-reported information from 1,800+ Salesforce professionals, spanning a range of job titles, industries, and geographic locations.

Salesforce Admin Salary Factors

One single figure without context can be misleading: there will be a significant difference in the salaries based on certain factors. We will dive into the following factors in this guide:

• Experience (Seniority)
• Certifications
• Location

Experience (Seniority)

As with any profession, the more experience and responsibility you take on in your job, the higher your salary expectations should be.

Admins don’t build Salesforce solutions because they are cool, you build solutions to solve complex business issues. How can we do this well unless we have done it before? Or possibly failed before and know the pitfalls of doing it a certain way over another?

We defined a junior/mid-level/senior Admin based on years of experience and the types of activities they are carrying out in their role. Here is the list:

Junior

0 – 2 years, maybe 3 years.

• Maintaining the Salesforce org on a day to day basis,
• Usually working with Sales Cloud,
• Acting as the first line of support for users,
• Example responsibilities: user management, maintaining the security model, record types, basic Process Builders, page layouts, reports & dashboards, data management (importing/upserting records),
• Doing some requirements gathering, but not a core competency,
• Generally won’t have detailed knowledge of project management,
• Work in a team, or a solo admin, or possibly are an “Accidental Admin” at an end-user.

Mid-level

2 – 4 years.

• Maintaining a fairly complex Salesforce org (either with more users, a more complex sharing model, integrations and/or using less common features),
• Usually working with Sales Cloud or a suite of clouds (Sales + Service Cloud, etc.), which could result in having a specialism eg. CPQ,
• Maintaining and customizing the Salesforce org using best practices. Full understanding of options, such as automation, record types vs. page layouts,
• Utilize more advanced automation (Salesforce Flow),
• Generally won’t have exposure to programmatic customization (code), however, will be able to write specs for developers,
• Exposure to requirements gathering, understand business processes,
• Generally will have an understanding of project management,
• Self-sufficient, know where to find help online – you will know what you don’t know (ie. the terminology to find and decipher answers),

Senior

5+ years

• Maintaining a complex Salesforce org (that uses multiple Salesforce products on the Salesforce platform, multiple integrations, with 300+ typical users or 100+ heavy users*),
• Work at larger Enterprise companies in a product owner position,
• Will have fully fledged knowledge of Salesforce best practices, understand the architecture of Salesforce and how it integrates with other systems,
• Managing a team or working with external parties to oversee the development of the Salesforce org, and carrying out a number of releases per year,
• Have stakeholder management skills, responsible for governance (and usually a steering committee),
• Have mastered requirements gathering, full understanding of business processes.

*rough indication

You may know Salesforce inside out and be the most charismatic communicator out there, but unfortunately, experience is linear, and if you have just one year of experience, that’s always going to impact your seniority prospects.

Being a valuable Admin is not just knowing how to configure that complicated process builder because a stakeholder asked you to, it’s advising a business the best way to achieve a certain outcome, based on your industry or their specific requirements.

Certifications

Salesforce Administrator certifications are another factor that have the potential to influence your salary. We found something common with our other Salary Guides: the experience vs. certifications debate.

Experience will always trump certifications. Certifications are beneficial especially for Admins establishing themselves at the mid-level, looking to strengthen their Salesforce best practice knowledge (we cover this in more detail in “8 Ways to Increase Your Salesforce Admin Salary”.

Of the 2,500+ Salesforce professionals that responded, 88% of respondents hold the Salesforce Administrator certification (the most popular), and 24% of respondents had Salesforce Advanced Administrator (6th most popular). Both certifications making into the top 10 makes a statement about their popularity, considering there are 30+ Salesforce certifications!

Salesforce professionals love getting Certifications – they are a milestone in your career, that prove that you know what you are talking about, and are leverage if you are looking for a more senior position internally, or looking for a job in another company.

In the Salary Survey, respondents were asked if they experienced an increase in their salary after earning a certification:

• 44% did, reporting an average salary increase of 24%,
• 56% did not, their salaries remained the same.

A 50/50 chance that your salary could increase the more certifications you earn can’t be ignored.

Refocusing back on Admins, almost a quarter (22%) believe that holding the Advanced Administrator is likely to increase your worth (ranked 7th), whereas the Administrator certification did not make it into the top 10.

Notice how I said Admin certifications have the potential to influence your salary. While this data is great to get a general snapshot, these figures may be clouded by what people think, vs. what happens on the job market (their opinion vs. the reality).

Based on my conversations with Christine and a few other Admins, certifications won’t directly affect the salary you will achieve – your experience will. Let’s take two Admins: Joe and Carole. Joe is a Salesforce Admins with 2 years experience, and has achieved 5 certifications (Admin, Advanced Admin, and others). He is interviewing against Carole, a Salesforce Admins with 5 years experience (some Salesforce Administration, project management, combined with an understanding of SalesOps), and has 1 single certification (Certified Administrator). Assuming they are both good candidates with no major flaws, I would expect the hiring manager to hire Carole. I would also expect Carole to demand a higher salary based on her 5 years of experience and parallel skill sets.

If both individuals have equal technical experience, then certifications will act as the tie-breaker and justify a higher salary, too. Otherwise, Christine has seen that when both individuals have equal technical experience, they would command the same salary.

Location

Salary figures are influenced by location, due to the differences in the cost of living between countries – and within countries!

Converting all the salaries into US$ makes the geographic comparison easier. Senior Admins in the US reported an average salary of around $154k. The UK Admins on average earn $91k, in Spain $49k (!), and in Japan the figure is $68k.

Not only does the country’s economic climate influence salaries (by determining the cost of living), but also the Salesforce economy in these countries has an impact. The balance between supply and demand will determine an individual’s market value.

As a Londoner, I can vouch for how high the cost of living is, with a difference between the city and other regions of the UK. We see this reflected in the US data; Senior Admins in San Francisco reported an average salary of around $154k, whereas equivalent professionals in Austin reported averages just under $140k, and for Juniors it’s $140k and $123k, respectively. Unfortunately, we don’t have a city breakdown for other countries, but it’s likely to be the same story.