Nothing ever stays the same, especially in the world of tech. Since the birth of the Internet, the rise of the mobile, and now the emergence of artificial intelligence, tech roles have been changing to fit what the market demands. Some roles disappear entirely, with new, more advanced roles taking their place.
Salesforce roles are no exception. AI presents a unique opportunity for Salesforce roles to adapt and evolve to better fit what customers and clients will be looking for, especially since the alternative could render them obsolete. Here’s what some of them could look like.
How Have Salesforce Roles Developed So Far?
If the Salesforce job market is familiar with anything, it’s saturation. The COVID-19 pandemic acted as the catalyst for this saturation, with the demand for remote Salesforce professionals skyrocketing over the course of 2020-2022. When 2023 rolled around, Salesforce, as well as many other tech companies, realised they had overhired, triggering an onslaught of mass layoffs with levels that have not been reached since.
By that point, the damage had already been done. The ecosystem was suddenly full of professionals who had taken to Trailhead, earned certifications, and even completed internships – but there just were not enough jobs for them. The market subsequently faced a reset, with supply sky high and the demand nowhere near matching it.
By the end of 2024, the disparity between the two was concerning. Demand had fallen by 37% whilst supply was up 19%. In 2025, outcomes were only marginally better, with an 8% increase in demand and a 27% increase in supply. People evidently hadn’t given up on Salesforce or trying to break into the market, and it was clear that the availability of jobs was becoming more prominent, yet arguably not fast enough.
Last year, data from 10K’s Salesforce Ecosystem Talent Report showed that technical architects were the most in-demand technical role, with the demand up 27%. However, the demand for developers hit an all-time low, with a 12% drop, predominantly in India.
Over on the non-technical side, admins saw the sharpest increase with supply up 47% year-over-year (YoY) and demand up 14% globally. Business Analysts followed behind with supply up 33% and demand up 9%.
Perhaps most importantly, it was finally becoming clear as to how AI was reshaping Salesforce roles. The daily grind for admins and developers has been undergoing a fundamental shift; routine configuration, basic automation, and standard troubleshooting are increasingly being handed over to AI agents, effectively moving the goalposts for what it means to be a professional in this space.
That being said, just how much change are we likely to encounter with these roles?
How These 6 Roles Could Change in the AI Era
At this year’s Irish Dreamin’, Matthew Morris, the Digital Customer Experience Innovation Director at Capgemini, delivered an incredibly informative session on what the future of Salesforce roles could look like. He detailed what six roles in particular – the admin, developer, architect, platform engineer, security expert, and data expert – could shape up to be, guided by the demands of AI going forward.
Admin
It is likely that the Salesforce Admin role will undergo the most change as AI develops. Long considered the starting role for many Salesforce professionals, it is currently a role that requires adequate Salesforce platform knowledge, focusing heavily on configuration, process management, and user management.
Going forward, we could see the admin role change to include more responsibilities like platform observability and AI governance. Admins will likely play a slightly different role in terms of org monitoring, making sure shadow AI does not become a problem, and that tech stacks are operating seamlessly.
Travis Dykstra, a Senior Salesforce Business Analyst, said he believes we could see the admineloper (admin and developer) role become a lot more common, especially as AI advances.
“I could really see the admin role becoming an admin/developer role, with the use of Agentforce Vibes and other vibe coding platforms,” he told SF Ben. “I see those two positions becoming hybridized to where your admin is going to be your primary developer.”
Debates on whether or not AI has the potential to make entry-level roles like the admin role obsolete are currently ongoing, but this very well could be an outcome.
Developer
If Travis’ predictions are correct, then the Salesforce Developer role could be merged with the admin, forming a hybrid role that is equal parts observability and fixing as well as building and integrating.
If this is the case, Salesforce professionals who are able to think and operate like a developer – with a bird’s eye view of an entire org – will be the ones who succeed, especially as developers will likely have to think about testability, boundary design, and AI tool use in the future.
“I think there’s going to be a knowledge gap with current admins as far as the development mindset exists,” Travis said.
Architect
Salesforce Architects currently have to consider a lot when it comes to their day-to-day work. A lot of it is currently centered around designing new solutions, reviewing standards, and bridging the gap between business needs and technical capabilities.
As the AI era progresses, we could see architects become what Matthew calls “stewards of evolving intent”. Essentially, the architect’s role could change in a way that they focus less on designing a fixed system around fixed requirements, and more on continuously guiding how business goals are interpreted, translated, and safely executed by AI-enabled systems.
Architects will likely need to become guardians of intent, ensuring that an AI agent’s actions still reflect the organization’s real priorities. This includes risk appetite, customer promises, compliance obligations, and ethical boundaries.
It is also likely that Salesforce Architects will be one of the more protected roles against AI-influenced layoffs in the future, with Solution Architect Cecilia Chiderski saying she believes architects will actually be needed more than ever.
“If we are smart enough, we can make it work for us,” she told SF Ben. “There will still be organizations out there that are going to be a mess, that just threw stuff in the org in the name of AI.” That’s where architects will be needed.
Platform Engineer
The engineering landscape at Salesforce and in its community has been changing over the last few years. In 2024, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced that the company would be hiring no more software engineers in 2025 due to a 30% productivity boost from AI, and then went on to say that AI could not replace software engineers just yet, last month.
Not only that, but the ecosystem has also seen the rise of the Forward Deployed Engineer – a deep technical expert within the Agentforce product suite that are “part personal tech guru, business consultant, and hand-holder”.
A Salesforce Platform Engineer currently builds, customizes, and integrates solutions within the Salesforce ecosystem, largely focusing on DevOps and release management. In the future, we could see them routinely acting as an enforcement layer, using CI/CD as a policy gate.
This means that platform engineers could become the people who make sure every change entering Salesforce meets security, compliance, testing, and architecture standards before it can be deployed.
Security Expert
Security should be a priority for any Salesforce professional across any role at any time, but over the last year, it has been at the forefront of everyone’s minds due to a long string of Salesforce breaches.
These attacks – alongside security requirements changing as a result of AI agents developing – have led to Salesforce customers needing to make significant security changes, like those applicable to Salesforce CLI.
An existing Salesforce Security Expert may focus largely on access compliance, but a security expert of the future may focus more on autonomous agent permissions and “blast radius control,” according to Matthew.
It means Salesforce security roles may shift from simply managing who can access what to controlling what AI agents are allowed to do, how far their actions can spread, and how much damage they could cause if something goes wrong.
Data Expert
Finally, we have the data expert. Data is, of course, what powers every CRM and influences every decision made in an org, and we’re likely to see data experts become much more prominent as AI develops and accesses more data sets.
The data expert of today may revolve around data management and reporting, but in the future, they could potentially do so much more, including looking at data lineage, auditability, and context pipelines.
Mehmet Orun, Salesforce MVP and Data 360 expert, told SF Ben in March that “data quality cannot be an afterthought” anymore, and that he expects this year to bring more AI and Data conversations – “not just feature discussions.
“The greater value potential, powered by Data 360, lies in tapping into relevant data assets across the organization to create contextual intelligence – where humans and agents alike have access to information that is relevant, complete, current, consistent, correct, and compliant.”
Why You Should Prepare for Evolving Roles
As Travis puts it: “There’s not a role out there that’s not going to be affected by AI to some degree.” This means, at the very least, we should all be prepared for the ways in which AI could push Salesforce roles to evolve, no matter what that looks like.
Nathalie Scardino, Salesforce’s President and Chief People Officer, recently said that the company’s “traditional job descriptions no longer exist” in the world of Salesforce and the wider tech space.
“Our focus has been on redesigning every job and reskilling every employee,” she said.
We’re beginning to see it start, too. Meta recently laid off 8,000 people while simultaneously moving 7,000 employees into new roles tied to AI. Salesforce has an active program where it tries to “layoff-proof” its employees by moving them into more integral roles, namely in those involving AI.
The change has already started, and it’s not going to slow down any time soon.
Final Thoughts
AI will transform Salesforce roles – there is no doubt about that. How much they change is a different matter, as it really will depend on how both employees and businesses integrate with the technology going forward.
Which role do you think will see the most change? Let us know in the comments below.
