Highlights
- While current employment is split almost 50-50, preferences for end customer employment significantly outweighs consulting employment.
- This is driven primarily by the ever-increasing complexity of Salesforce’s technology offerings, as well as pressures not directly related to the Salesforce Architect role.
- Self-awareness about career and life trajectory is key to ensuring success and satisfaction in your next role.
When we surveyed Salesforce Architects on their current role, we discovered that 42% of respondents currently worked at a consultancy, and 40% were with a customer. We then asked them where they’d prefer to be working, and an overwhelming 52.7% said they would prefer to be working with a customer.
The contrast between reality and what is ideal is stark, and I’m going to dive into why the preference gap exists in more detail. Our SF Ben Architect Survey 2026 had some other data that I believe provides some answers to this question.
The Reality vs. The Preference
There’s a big difference between the 52.7% who want to work for a customer and the 40% who actually do today. Perhaps even more interesting is the preference to work for a consultancy – this figure drops to 12.3%, compared to the 42% (the largest group) that do work for a consultancy today.
There’s almost a 50-50 split between those who currently work for a consultancy and those at customer organizations. This contrasts with a 4.28x multiplier of those who prefer a consultancy compared to those who want to work for a customer.
Notably, 4.3% of respondents currently work for Salesforce themselves, and this number jumps up to 17.3% when we asked for a preference. This is over a 4x jump in those who want to work for the mothership.
Why Is End-Customer Work Preferred?
The survey also gave us some insight as to why many Salesforce Architects may prefer customer work as opposed to consulting work. The biggest answer came when we asked them what they believed the biggest risks were to their careers.
The top three answers to that question were a concern that the Salesforce Platform may lose dominance (24.8%), keeping up with rapidly changing technology (24.8%), and an increase in Salesforce professionals/architects (24.2%). These three responses all offer slightly different reasons why many architects may prefer to move into a Salesforce customer’s business rather than consulting.
First and foremost, many employees at Salesforce consultancies may struggle to break free from Salesforce technologies if that’s what they’re employed to do – especially given how many new technologies the company releases. If there are concerns about Salesforce losing dominance, this may push architects to want to focus on a single customer with a smaller set of technologies.
Customer organizations also have more than just Salesforce deployed in-house, so this will give architects the opportunity to learn and work with something new. Too much spread across Salesforce tooling, coupled with a concern that Salesforce may lose its dominance, may have Salesforce Architects considering their options and the technologies they work with.
Salesforce’s face has changed completely in the last few years. They’ve pivoted from being the super-flexible customer platform to becoming the agentic AI platform that connects and harmonizes data from multiple systems. That’s a big jump, and has led to many, many changes to existing tools, as well as totally new ones being developed or adapted from acquisition.
Salesforce Architects are expected to connect all these different tools together based on the requirements of the business. At a consultancy, this means having a good understanding of all available tools and being able to apply them in multiple different industries. This can be exhausting and is likely the key reason we’re seeing a preferential lean toward customer employment.
We’ve gone into depth about the changes that Salesforce Admins are seeing, and one big push is for them to become micro-architects in their own right. They’re being asked to be more strategic and less hands-on. This has been enough of a push for some of the more advanced admins to look at pursuing a role as a Salesforce Architect. This, in conjunction with the concern that there are more Salesforce Architects available, may be pushing Salesforce Architects into the customer space. It could even be why we saw 5.4% of respondents considering a move beyond the Salesforce ecosystem entirely.
Perhaps the question isn’t “why is customer-facing employment preferred?” but should instead be “why are architects wanting to move away from consultancies?”
Consulting Isn’t for Everyone
I’ve been blessed with many opportunities in my career in the Salesforce space. From working at a customer organization and liaising with an SI partner to get Salesforce implemented, to working for a handful of consulting firms, and even offering my freelance Salesforce consulting services. I’ve experienced both the customer and the consulting side of working with Salesforce. My consulting work has seen me working on my own, in a small Salesforce consulting team of three, and with larger multi-national teams with hundreds of consultants.
I’ve had conversations with former colleagues who have come from customer-side roles and joined a consultancy and have said it’s the best thing they’ve ever done. I’ve also had conversations with others who have moved from the consultancy to a customer and said the exact same thing.
One thing I will say with full confidence – consulting isn’t for everyone. Not only that, but if you’ve enjoyed consulting for a long time, time and circumstances may change that. As life changes, as the tech landscape evolves, your preferences will also change. Demand for your role will go up and down as well, which puts additional pressures on you that you’ve not experienced before.
The most important thing that you need to do when considering whether you want to work for a Salesforce customer, a consulting partner, the mothership itself, or go freelancing, is to consider what the next few years of your life look like.
Are you a young, energetic go-getter with a hunger to learn and work with anything and everything you can? Working with a consulting partner sounds perfect for you.
Have you been working with Salesforce for over a decade and want to have more control over your time, clients, and focus? Freelancing or building your own small consulting business sounds like a great option.
Are you feeling burnt out, or have priorities in your personal life that are competing for your time (like having children, a growing side hustle, or just wanting more time to yourself)? It sounds like you could add value by dedicating your time to a single Salesforce customer.
Self-awareness is key to career satisfaction and ultimately career success.
Final Thoughts
While the market seems to be equally split between Salesforce Architects who work for customers and those who work for consultancies, the work preferences of individual architects certainly are not.
There is a significant decline in the popularity of consulting partner employment among Salesforce Architects. Based on the data in our survey, we believe a lot of this is due to the increasingly widespread sprawl of technologies on offer from Salesforce, as well as changes to other Salesforce roles that are impacting the demand for Salesforce Architects.
Don’t forget to download the SF Ben Architect Survey Report 2026 to read the insights in full detail!
If you’re a Salesforce Architect, what is your general feel for the future of your career? Are you hopeful? Considering a change? Looking beyond just Salesforce for that change? We’d love to hear more.
