10K’s 2025 Salesforce Ecosystem Report spotlighted several key changes that we’re now seeing in the global Salesforce job market. A “bounce back” is starting to take place, with demand for talent on the rise following a sharp decline in recent years, as well as a significant rise in supply – the highest rates that we’ve seen in over a decade.
However, this job market revival comes with conditions. Companies now have heightened expectations of job seekers and require prospects that provide more architectural oversight, strategic alignment, and business outcomes.
Salesforce Administrators, for example, are now noticing a big shift in what’s expected of their role. Supply is soaring at the moment globally (+47%), and demand is back on the up (+14%) after a few years on a downward trend. While positive, the supply/demand imbalance encourages companies to be more selective going forward. Admins now need to manage automation, navigate technical debt, implement Flow migrations, and tackle developments with AI.
Meanwhile, Salesforce Developers were the only role to decrease in demand (-12%) globally this year, with supply also shrinking slightly (-4%). Reasons point to the fact that AI is potentially automating repeatable tasks – creating a bottleneck for entry-level developers who may struggle to find roles as the expectations evolve.
While one goes up and another goes down, the two roles have something in common: the expectations are changing drastically, and it’s looking more likely that the two will need to compete within their respective fields to stand out. 10K’s report even alludes to the role looking a lot different in a few years, where more hybrid positions – or new ones altogether – may start to emerge, that blend admin, developer, and architect skill sets.
To delve into this further, I spoke to the CEO of 10K, Nick Hamm, and Lead Salesforce Engineer of LendInvest, Ellie Matthewman, to discuss how these responsibilities are changing, and what admin and developer job seekers need to prioritize to stand out over the next few years.
“I Wouldn’t Want to Start as an Admin Today…”
For many years now, Salesforce Admins have been the figurative backbone of the platform – the ones making it all work quietly behind the scenes. But that behind-the-scenes role is changing fast.
As automation expands wider and AI weaves itself deeper into Salesforce, admins aren’t just expected to configure, but also coordinate, design, and almost act as architects of these intelligent new systems.
Ellie says the word “admin” doesn’t really capture the reality of the job anymore. “I wouldn’t want to start as an admin today – there’s way too much to learn,” she says. “You can’t just say admin anymore because it could mean so many different things. In our company, we think of our admins as ‘declarative developers’ because they’re working with Flow and building automation.
“Yes, it’s point-and-click, but you still need a developer mindset.”
This idea of a “declarative developer” is becoming common across the ecosystem at the moment. As the no-code tools grow so powerful, the actual line between configuration and development is blurring. Admins are now expected to understand how their automations perform, how data moves through the org, and how AI will actually interact with it.
Nick follows on from this, agreeing that we’re seeing the role evolve rather than fully disappearing.
“I don’t see [the admin role] going away,” Nick states. “What AI is doing is augmenting them and making many of their tasks more efficient. The admin role has always evolved with the platform, and that evolution will just continue. Admins will increasingly take on more analyst and architect responsibilities. The most successful ones always have.”
The evolution for admins now has a clear direction, which is Agentforce – Nick argues that understanding Salesforce’s AI tool will soon be a “non-negotiable skill”.
If you’re building a career around Salesforce, you need to know Agentforce. Knowing Flow, and even some Apex will be super important. But the real potential is when an agent can trigger multiple connected automations – five or six Flows in a chain – that you’ve designed.”
In other words, tomorrow’s admin may be designing the logic behind AI interactions rather than just maintaining them. Ellie mentions how she’s already seen this in action, saying: “When you’re building Flows for agents, you have to think very differently. You need to understand how the agent is going to use the Flow – the inputs it’s capturing, the outputs it’s producing. You can’t just build something that works; you have to design it around how the agent interacts with it.
Both experts preach a similar message when it comes to admins who want to future-proof their careers, which is to learn AI, master automation, and learn more business language. As Nick puts it: “Being an admin who doesn’t know Agentforce will be like being an admin who doesn’t know Flow. You can exist, but it’s not sustainable. The future admins are going to be part technologist, part business analyst, part architect.”
Developers: From Builders to Integrators
If admins are being pulled closer to architecture, developers, on the other hand, are being pushed higher up the stack. The days of spending entire sprints writing Apex for simple automations are fading quickly, with AI taking care of much of the repeatable, lower-level code work.
For developers, the next few years are about integrating, reviewing, and securing what AI is able to create.
Nick believes that AI isn’t eliminating developer roles, per se, but fundamentally changing where the real value lies.
“AI is augmenting developers and making many of their tasks more efficient,” he says. “There are lots of tools – both from Salesforce and third parties – that automate the creation of metadata and even write code. Developers aren’t going away, but they’ll have to evolve, just like admins are. The role will continue to move up the value chain.”
This is already visible with Salesforce’s own tools – like Agentforce Vibes – and the growing number of AI assistants across the ecosystem.
Instead of spending long amounts of time writing lines of Apex, developers are now expected to design the logic behind the systems, review what the AI produces, and ensure that it’s scalable and compliant.
This is an area where many – including Ellie – have some concerns.
“I do worry about junior developers coming into the ecosystem with AI now,” she says. “AI can write code, but I wouldn’t put AI-written code straight into production without thoroughly reviewing it. As more mid- and senior-level developers move up, I worry about how new developers are going to learn those skills. Juniors might rely too much on AI without having mentors to review their work.
“Security is a big area for developers,” Ellie adds. “Especially with inbound integrations, they need to make sure those connections are secure. That’s where developers can really add value.”
Both agree that coding in isolation will likely not be enough, with Nick pointing to the growing importance of automation literacy alongside traditional development.
“Agentforce is powerful for automating automations,” he says. “Knowing Flow, and even some Apex, is going to be super important. The higher-level capabilities around Agentforce and AI are really about having an Agent trigger multiple chained automations that you build via Flow.”
In that sense, developers are moving from pure builders to integrators, and becoming professionals who connect AI logic, automation, and security rather than just writing code line by line.
As Ellie puts it, “Where a junior developer can add value is understanding the business in a more nuanced way than AI ever will. If we want efficient systems, that’s where a junior developer can show their value and learn.”
The Developer of 2025 is currently being redefined. Those who rise above routine code and focus on integration, governance, and security will be the ones shaping how AI-assisted development actually works in practice.
Final Thoughts
Overall, AI isn’t “getting rid” of admins or developers, but instead having a drastic effect on what their day-to-day looks like, with both experts concluding that the role is very much evolving amidst the new developments we’re seeing with Salesforce.
Admins are now taking on much more responsibility, becoming people who can connect automation and AI with real-life business goals. Meanwhile, developers are moving up – with expectations to handle integrations and keep things secure.
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