Distinguished Architect

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Job Category
Sales

Job Details

About Salesforce

Salesforce is the #1 AI CRM, where humans with agents drive customer success together. Here, ambition meets action. Tech meets trust. And innovation isn't a buzzword - it's a way of life. The world of work as we know it is changing and we're looking for Trailblazers who are passionate about bettering business and the world through AI, driving innovation, and keeping Salesforce's core values at the heart of it all.

Ready to level-up your career at the company leading workforce transformation in the agentic era? You're in the right place! Agentforce is the future of AI, and you are the future of Salesforce.

As a Distinguished Cross Cloud Solution Architect, you will be one of the most senior and experienced solution architecture practitioners in the UKI Solution Engineering team. You will play a defining role in shaping how Salesforce's most strategic UK & Ireland customers become Agentic Enterprises - designing transformative, multi-cloud architectures that span the full Salesforce platform, with Agentforce and Data 360 at their core.
This is not simply an execution role. At Distinguished level, you are expected to set the architectural direction for the team, influence Salesforce's global product and architecture thinking, and act as the recognised authority on cross-cloud solution design both internally and externally. You will work on the most complex, high-value engagements across B2C and B2B scenarios - from pre-sales through to adoption - and will personally lead the most strategic architecture conversations at C-suite and CTO level.
You will be a central pillar of the UKI SE Architecture, Data & AI Practice - a team whose mission is to Inspire. Architect. Prove. Enable. - and you will model what it means to be a trusted technical advisor helping customers realise tangible outcomes from their Salesforce investments.

Why "Cross Cloud"?

The modern customer journey spans acquisition, engagement, commerce, support, retention and increasingly autonomous AI-driven operations. These activities require seamlessly integrated architectures across multiple Salesforce products (Clouds) - including Agentforce, Data 360, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud and Sales Cloud - together with MuleSoft, Informatica, Slack and third-party platforms. At the Distinguished level, you will not only design these architectures but define patterns and standards to be used across the UKI SE team and beyond.

• Define and lead the cross-cloud solution architecture strategy for UKI's most strategic and complex customer engagements, operating at C-suite and CTO level.
• Architect end-to-end Agentic Enterprise solutions - designing how Agentforce, Data 360, and the broader Salesforce platform combine to deliver autonomous, AI-driven transformation for enterprise customers.
• Pioneer Agentic Interoperability - architecting how agents communicate and collaborate within Salesforce orgs, across the enterprise and beyond, including MuleSoft, Informatica and emerging standards such as MCP.
• Research, develop and share authoritative points of view on solution and AI security, governance and compliance (including AIUC-1 and the EU AI Act) as they apply to cross-cloud architectures.
• Create and own a portfolio of reusable, publishable architecture patterns, reference architectures and best practice frameworks that enable the broader SE organisation and SI/ISV ecosystem to move faster.

• Lead the most complex and highest-value pre-sales architecture engagements - technical design sessions, workshops, discovery engagements and executive-level architecture reviews - for our most strategic Enterprise accounts.
• Translate complex, ambiguous business requirements into compelling, viable solution architectures and strategic roadmaps that maximise customer value and drive long-term outcomes. Where necessary, realign customer expectations to position agentic first approaches that can deliver rapid, high value solutions.
• Build solution proposals that address immediate customer needs while establishing a credible long-range architecture vision, articulating options, trade-offs and decision rationale with clarity.
• Proactively engage strategic accounts ahead of active deal cycles - shaping architecture thinking and technical strategy before being formally engaged.
• Design solutions with consumption, adoption and retention in mind from day one - protecting existing customer value while driving net new growth.
• Provide customers with a robust architecture handover framework, with best practice guidance for use by SI partners or Salesforce Professional Services during implementation.

• In conjunction with the wider architecture practice, serve as a technical bridge between the UKI SE team and the partner ecosystem
• Collaborate with Salesforce Product, Engineering, Services and Global Enterprise Architecture teams to shape reference architectures, influence the product roadmap, and establish global best practices.
• Co-define and uphold the Technical Handoff Protocol ensuring pre-sales architectures are faithfully delivered post-sale, preventing architecture drift.
• Act as a senior technical contributor to the AI Centre - advising on customer experience design, thought leadership content and Agentforce-led activations.

• Publish original, senior-level thought leadership on Salesforce (including Agentforce) architecture, Agentic Interoperability, Data 360 and cross-cloud design - positioning Salesforce as the definitive voice on Agentic Enterprise transformation.
• Lead and contribute to the Solution Architecture Practitioner Programme, Architect Forums, Architecture and AI education days and other enablement initiatives.
• Mentor and elevate the entire Solution Architect team and wider SE community - setting the bar for technical excellence, intellectual rigour and customer impact.
• Represent Salesforce at strategic external events, industry forums and customer engagements as a recognised authority.

• Attain quarterly and annual objectives assigned by management, including Deal Contribution targets and activity hour requirements.
• Accurately and promptly record all customer-related activity and deal contributions in line with team operating guidelines.
• Maintain current knowledge, skills and certifications across the Salesforce platform and relevant emerging technologies.

• Extensive, proven experience in enterprise, software or solution architecture disciplines - with a track record of delivering architectures at scale for complex, multi-stakeholder enterprise customers. This should include
  • Deep, hands-on practitioner expertise across multiple Salesforce products, including at least three of: Agentforce, Data 360, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, MuleSoft.
  • Plus one or more of:
    • Agentforce and AI fluency - able to architect autonomous, agent-first solutions and articulate the technical and business implications of Agentic transformation, including AI security, governance and ethical considerations.
    • Advanced integration expertise: end-to-end integration architecture across SaaS-to-SaaS and on-premise systems - API lifecycle management, iPaaS/ESB, MuleSoft, batch ETL/ELT, REST, OData, Kafka, pub-sub and event-driven integration, micro-service and platform integration patterns.
    • Advanced data architecture expertise: operational vs analytical architectures, Master Data Management, Data Strategy and Governance, Data Stores (RDBMSs, Kafka, cloud storage), and Data Readiness for AI.
    • Public cloud architecture: designed and delivered end-to-end solutions involving Salesforce, AWS, Azure and/or GCP - achieving scalable, secure, reliable and manageable enterprise solutions.
• Executive-level communication: exceptional ability to articulate complex architectures and their business value to C-suite, CTO and Board-level stakeholders; equally comfortable in technical deep-dives with engineering teams.
• Demonstrated global or regional impact - through the creation, publication and adoption of reusable assets, reference architectures or best practice frameworks used beyond the immediate team.

• Prior experience at Distinguished or Principal grade (or equivalent) in a technical pre-sales or senior architecture role at a leading technology vendor or global implementation consultancy.
• Understanding of security and data privacy in the UK and EU markets, including GDPR, UK GDPR, and emerging AI regulation (AIUC-1, EU AI Act).
• Experience with Informatica, Tableau Next and/or Slack as part of an integrated Salesforce platform strategy.
• Familiarity with enterprise architecture frameworks (TOGAF, Zachman, etc.) and their application in pre-sales contexts.
• Experience with design thinking, solution selling and value-based selling approaches at senior levels.
• Salesforce development experience (Apex/LWC, Java, JavaScript) and understanding of modern application development patterns. Experience of AI enabled coding tools and harnesses such Codex, Claude Code, Cursor.
• Active Salesforce certifications across multiple product domains; Salesforce Certified Technical Architect (CTA) desirable.