After months of data collecting, crunching numbers, and report writing, our first annual SF Ben Salary Survey report is finally here! While this isn’t the first salary report to hit the ecosystem, we believe it to be the biggest and the most detailed, with over 3,500 respondents submitting answers.
Although we recommend everyone to peek at the official report, this post will go into a few highlights and trends that the survey has revealed. Let’s take a look…
1. The Current Job Market
The Salesforce job market has been the talk of the town for the past year. After becoming one of the most lucrative job opportunities in the tech industry, the Salesforce job market quickly became saturated, and it was much harder to land an entry-level role.
In the survey, we asked respondents when they joined the ecosystem, which created a fascinating graph, plotting the explosion, and subsequent decline of new entrants entering the ecosystem.
Salesforce launched Trailhead and the Trailblazer movement back in 2014, which clearly had a huge impact on the job market by democratizing Salesforce skills on their free learning platform.
However, the past couple of years paint a different picture. With ecosystem growth slowing, and layoffs becoming commonplace, the number of new entrants entering the ecosystem is a fraction of previous years – at levels not seen since 2005/2006.

Whilst it’s clearly been tough for new entrants entering the ecosystem, it’s not ideal for experienced Salesforce professionals either, with job searches taking much longer than in previous years. Although we have no data to compare this to, I’m sure every professional can relate to the days when they could land another job or contract pretty instantly.
Nowadays, it takes a quarter of professionals around three to six months to land their next role, with some taking longer, and others much shorter (within one to two weeks). Ultimately, this is going to depend on your niche specialties and the supply versus demand.
2. Salesforce Is Still Very Lucrative
Although there is lots of doom and gloom talk, for those who have worked in the Salesforce ecosystem for a few years, it’s still a very lucrative career (but we knew this already, right?). Salaries remain very high compared to average salary figures, even within the technology industry, and there is a clear scope for salary growth.
Entry-level salaries start fairly low (dependent on the country) when you begin your first role, but then they can increase rapidly. There is also very obvious salary growth within each role, so as you become more senior with an increasing number of years of experience, your salary should naturally increase within this same role.
Bonuses are another important area that is fairly common within the Salesforce ecosystem, with 57% of all respondents stating they receive some kind of additional compensation, such as an annual or performance-based bonus.
3. More Certifications Equals Higher Salary
There’s been a lot of chatter recently around Salesforce certifications and whether they are worth investing your time in, simply to collect certs so they look good on your CV. The general consensus is that no, collecting certifications for the sake of it is not worthwhile – you need to back them up with relevant experience for them to be truly valuable.
But in an insight that may shed a different light on certifications, our survey has concluded that having more certifications is likely to lead to a higher salary.

However, before you start jumping on the certification bandwagon, there are a lot of hidden factors at play here. For a start, your salary is likely to rise over time, and the longer you have been in Salesforce, the more likely you are to have gained additional certifications.
In addition, for those who are at the junior or intermediate level (under five years), the data shows that additional certifications do not necessarily affect your salary.
But, for senior-level professionals, additional certifications can mean a higher salary. In particular, the ceiling for salary seems to increase when experienced professionals achieve over seven certifications. Many factors play into this, such as budding CTAs following the architect certification path who are likely to have higher salaries, or those at Salesforce or consulting partners who are financially incentivized to take more certifications.
4. The Type of Company You Work For Matters
Of course, money isn’t everything, but it is the focus of our salary survey.
With this in mind, your salary can drastically differ depending on the type of company you work for. Whether it’s an end-user versus consulting, a large corporate versus a small business, or manufacturing versus financial services, the type of company matters.
The salary survey dives deep into these factors, and how salary can change based on these data points, as well as many more. We’ve even provided a breakdown for some of the countries we had sufficient data for.
Putting salary aside for a minute, different companies can also have very different working environments, varying approaches to work/life balance, as well as the pressure that is put on you to perform.
5. Salaries Are Trending Down
An unfortunate trend of layoffs and the saturation of the Salesforce job market is that companies can afford to offer a lower salary than in previous years. With more supply and less demand, this is a natural side effect.
Out of the 24 top roles that we recorded data for, 16 have seen a decrease in salary when comparing the earnings of those who secured a job in the past 18 months to those who landed a job in previous years. When taking inflation into account, this isn’t ideal.
However, for the core roles in the Salesforce ecosystem, the declines are in the single digits. On a global average basis, business analyst salaries have declined by 5% in the past 18 months, while developers and admins have declined by 4%, and solution engineers by 3%.
On the more positive side, some roles such as Account Engagement (Pardot) Admins, CPQ Consultants, and DevOps Engineers have risen. Perhaps adding to the argument that specializations are the future.
Summary
There are still many promising opportunities for experienced professionals – especially with the right certifications and specializations. The Salesforce job market may be shifting, but there is still a lot of potential for lucrative career paths and salary growth.
If you wish to learn more, make sure to download our latest SF Ben Salesforce Salary report.