Salesforce Architect (Greater Chicago Area)

The Salesforce Architect is the hands-on technical authority for the Salesforce ecosystem. You own solution architecture, design quality, platform integrity, and the engineering standards for changing and running this business-critical environment.

You will support the current Salesforce/Fonteva platform while reducing unnecessary customization, technical debt, and vendor dependence. You will also preserve future options by building modular interfaces, documenting the current state, and providing objective technical analysis for modernization, migration, or selective capability replacement decisions.

Responsibilities

Solution Architecture and Technical Design (25%)

Define and govern designs for Salesforce/Fonteva and the CRM/AMS capabilities that depend on it.

Platform Engineering and Technical Quality (20%)

Lead hands-on work across Salesforce configuration, automation, custom development, and managed-package extensions.

Integration, Data, and Federated Architecture (20%)

Design reliable data movement and system interactions across the national, state, and local membership ecosystem.

Security, Reliability, and Operational Stewardship (15%)

Protect the security, performance, and stability of Salesforce/Fonteva and its member-facing services.

Release, Environment, and Technical Governance (10%)

Establish the technical controls that move changes safely from design to production.

Modernization, Vendor Transition, and Technical Strategy (10%)

Provide technical analysis and knowledge transfer that strengthen internal ownership and inform the future of the CRM/AMS ecosystem.

Qualifications

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, software engineering, or a related field. Twelve years of experience may substitute for the degree.

Required Experience

• 8+ years of progressively responsible enterprise application experience
• 5+ years of hands-on Salesforce delivery
• 3+ years as a Salesforce solution architect, technical architect, or technical lead in a complex production environment
• Must have Fonteva experience
• Architecture ownership across custom development, integrations, external users, data, security, and release engineering

Your background should include:

• Owning end-to-end technical designs in a production Salesforce org with significant custom code, automation, integrations, and managed packages
• Diagnosing Apex, Lightning Web Components, Flow, SOQL, metadata, sharing, and integration behavior directly, not only through high-level design artifacts
• Designing secure Experience Cloud (or comparable) member portal access, including external identities and unauthenticated scenarios
• Designing APIs and data exchanges across multiple systems, organizations, or operating models, with reconciliation and support controls
• Leading architecture reviews, technical estimation, code and configuration reviews, test strategy, and release readiness
• Remediating technical debt, performance problems, security gaps, upgrade constraints, or unstable production behavior in an established org
• Directing developers, administrators, consultants, and managed-service providers without direct supervisory authority
• Writing architecture, operating, and decision documentation that internal teams can rely on after a consultant or key resource departs

Knowledge and Skills

• Salesforce architecture: data modeling, security and sharing, automation, Apex, LWC, Flow, Experience Cloud, asynchronous processing, APIs, and platform limits
• Tradeoff analysis: declarative configuration vs. custom development, managed packages, middleware, and external products
• Managed packages: extension patterns, dependency management, release compatibility, and vendor-supported upgrade paths
• Integration patterns: REST and SOAP APIs, platform events and other event patterns, batch processing, identity, error handling, retry, and reconciliation
• CRM concepts: constituent relationships, organizational affiliations, membership status, eligibility, join and renewal, dues, pricing, billing, payments, refunds, remittance, events, and member service
• Federated models: independent organizations sharing standards and data without sharing one application or one set of local policies
• Security: least privilege, profiles, permission sets, sharing, field-level security, external-user access, integration identities, payment-card and personal-data protection, and auditability
• DevOps: metadata management, Git-based source control, automated testing, CI/CD, environment strategy, and controlled deployment
• Performance and operations: governor limits, data volume, storage, asynchronous workloads, monitoring, incident response, backup, and recovery
• Architecture documentation: current- and target-state diagrams, data and integration models, sequence diagrams, decision records, nonfunctional requirements, and technical standards
• Technical-debt management: assessment, code and automation inventory, dependency analysis, and staged remediation planning
• Agile delivery: backlog refinement, estimation, dependency management, release governance, and collaboration with product, analysis, QA, data, and engineering
• AI-assisted analysis: approved practices with human validation, privacy protection, access control, and reproducible evidence

Abilities and Attributes

• Moves fluidly between architecture strategy and detailed evidence in code, metadata, logs, data structures, and integration behavior
• Explains complex designs and risks in business terms while giving developers precise implementation direction
• Distinguishes policy questions, process problems, data defects, configuration issues, integration failures, and code defects before proposing a fix
• Constructively challenges unnecessary customization and vendor recommendations, and documents the basis for decisions
• Balances urgent production and renewal needs against long-term platform health, avoiding short-term fixes that create hidden risk
• Leads through technical authority, facilitation, and evidence rather than a management title or direct reports
• Writes clearly, documents with discipline, and follows through on risks, decisions, and corrective actions
• Stays vendor-neutral: supports the current platform while evaluating future options objectively
• Works comfortably in a hybrid environment with business leaders, technical specialists, vendors, and geographically distributed association partners

Certifications

Preferred: Salesforce Certified Platform Developer, plus one or more architect-domain credentials such as Platform Data Architect, Platform Integration Architect, or Platform Sharing and Visibility Architect.

Desirable, not required: Salesforce Certified Application Architect, System Architect, or Technical Architect.

Technology Environment

Salesforce, Fonteva, Experience Cloud, Azure DevOps, Git-based source control, Copado or comparable DevOps tooling, Power BI, Microsoft 365, API and integration technologies, data and reporting platforms, identity and security services, and approved generative AI tools. You will be expected to work with other products and patterns as the CRM/AMS architecture evolves.

Preferred, Not Required

• Fonteva architecture, development, administration, or upgrade experience, especially extending a managed package without undermining its supportability (strong preference)
• Experience with association management systems, membership organizations, nonprofits, healthcare associations, or other constituent-centered enterprises
• Experience with federated structures (national, state, local, franchise, or chapter) and independently governed business rules
• Experience with complex dues or pricing calculation, renewals, accounts receivable, payments, refunds, remittance, and financial reconciliation
• Experience modernizing a heavily customized Salesforce org, reducing managed-service dependence, or transferring architecture ownership to an internal team
• Experience with platform migration, selective capability replacement, API-led decomposition, or staged strangler architectures
• Experience analyzing Salesforce licensing, feature use, storage, environments, and dependencies to support contract right-sizing