How to Become a Salesforce Developer

Many organizations and corporations use customer relationship management (CRM) technologies to organize customer, sales, and other critical client data. These organizations once had to host CRMs in servers on-site, which took up digital storage space and required significant investments. With products like Salesforce, this is no longer needed, as they can host this data remotely and allow users to access it via the internet. 

Using these services often requires the skills of a Salesforce developer. If this role interests you, continue reading to learn more about what it entails, how to become a Salesforce developer, what the potential salary is, and much more. 

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a popular provider of affordable CRM software as a service (SaaS). It handles various business needs, including sales, service, marketing, analytics, and more. Instead of hosting Salesforce’s CRM locally, organizations can access it via the internet, saving them time and resources. Salesforce offers its SaaS products with several pricing plans to ease the financial burden, and it also retains all of an organization’s customer data in cloud storage to provide security and easy access. 

Read more: IaaS vs. PaaS vs. SaaS: Intro to Cloud Computing

What does a Salesforce developer do?

Salesforce developers are information technology (IT) experts specializing in Salesforce tools. They work with Salesforce software to solve issues for customers through code and Salesforce’s array of low-code and no-code tools. 

Some common responsibilities of a Salesforce developer include the following:

• Using application programming interfaces (APIs) to create custom business apps and solutions on Salesforce-compatible builders, such as Heroku and MuleSoft

• Customizing a standard Salesforce application to an organization’s needs

• Building customized marketing experiences with tools like Marketing Cloud

• Evaluating data to develop new business insights with Tableau

• Creating new customer experiences using a Progressive Web App (PWA) kit from Commerce Cloud

• Creating custom Slack apps

With this powerful tool and the relevant development skills, developers can engage with virtually every part of a business. 

Salesforce developer salary and job outlook

According to Glassdoor, the estimated total pay for a Salesforce developer in the US is $132,692 per year. This figure includes an average base salary of $103,277 and $29,416 in additional pay. Additional pay may represent profit-sharing, commissions, or bonuses [1]. 

The job outlook is also very strong for software developers. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) anticipates 26 percent growth in this occupation through 2032, which is much faster than other occupations in the US [2]. The BLS projects about 153,900 new openings annually, and most of these new openings will arise from the need to replace people transitioning to other roles or leaving the workforce [2].  

Read more: What Is a Good Salary?

How to become a Salesforce developer

To become a Salesforce developer, you'll need to know the basics of web development and computer programming, then refine that knowledge with a focus on Salesforce. Review the main steps to becoming a Salesforce developer in more detail. 

Learn more: What Is a Salesforce Administrator? And How to Become One

1. Get the proper education.

Developers, including Salesforce developers, typically start with earning a bachelor’s degree in a related field, such as computer and information technology, computer science, or software engineering. A formal college education is not a prerequisite for all organizations. Sometimes, a Salesforce developer boot camp provides sufficient concept reinforcement to help you start your career.

2. Learn about Salesforce.

Once you gain a firm background in development through formal education or a boot camp, you’ll want to immerse yourself in Salesforce and learn how it works and how to apply your development skills to it. You can gain this specialized knowledge in several ways, such as participating in online Salesforce development courses and tutorials or studying Apex, Salesforce’s proprietary programming language. 

A post-graduation Salesforce boot camp may also be a good option. This can help you obtain the direct experience you need and help you build a portfolio to show to prospective employers.

3. Obtain Salesforce certification.

Organizations seeking a Salesforce developer don’t always require Salesforce certifications, but they can help distinguish you from other candidates. Salesforce offers many guided development paths to build skills relevant to your field of interest. If you search for Salesforce certifications, you’ll find many options. 

So, where should you start? A great introductory certification is the Salesforce Administrator Certification, which helps you gain basic administrative knowledge of the Salesforce ecosystem. From this point, you can continue with other certifications, such as: 

• Salesforce Certified Advanced Administrator

• Salesforce Certified App Builder

• Sales Cloud Consultant

• Service Cloud Consultant

Additional certificates that may be useful include the following:

• B2C Commerce Developer

• Industries CPQ Developer

• JavaScript Developer I

• Marketing Cloud Developer

• OmniStudio Developer

• Platform App Builder

• Platform Developer I

• Platform Developer II

Read more: What Is a Salesforce Certification? Discover the Certifications Offered + How to Get One

4. Obtain Platform Developer I (PDI) certification.

Once you’ve gained one to two years of experience as a developer and six months of developing and launching business logic and user interfaces (UIs) via the Lightning Platform, you’re prepared to start working on the Platform Developer I (PDI) certification. 

Unlike other Salesforce certifications, which often focus on use cases, PDI certification focuses more on applying technical principles to specific scenarios. Salesforce divides the exam into four main topics. These topics and the percentage of the exam they each constitute are as follows: 

• Developer fundamentals: 23 percent

• Process automation and logic: 30 percent

• User interface: 25 percent

• Testing, debugging, and deployment: 22 percent 

Required skills for a Salesforce developer 

As you progress as a Salesforce developer, honing specific skills will help you grow and move up the career ladder. Review these helpful skills below.

1. Apex, Java, and JavaScript

While Apex is Salesforce’s proprietary programming language, it’s not the only one that's beneficial to understand. In addition to using Apex to develop custom applications, Java and Javascript are popular programming languages for further developing the application and adding interactive elements. 

2. Custom objects

Custom objects are customizable databases that store company information, such as client records, accounting information, and product details. By understanding how to create custom objects, you can optimize data storage for an organization and improve the CRM by letting users easily access all client information. 

3. Web services

Web services are software programs on the internet that use a specific messaging system. These don’t adhere to any specific programming language or operating system, so they are quite useful in the Salesforce ecosystem, which often connects various systems together.

4. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

CSS is a programming language you can use to style and lay out web pages. It can modify content size, spacing, color, and font. It can also add decorative features, such as animations, to a site. This is helpful in Salesforce, as it allows you to customize layouts and formats to be more user-friendly. 

Related roles

Salesforce development breaks down into a handful of smaller, more focused roles. These roles and their US salaries include the following: 

• Salesforce platform developer: As a Salesforce platform developer, you’ll customize the Salesforce platform with low-code tools and various coding languages, including JavaScript and Apex. You can expect to earn about $123,241 per year [3]. 

• Commerce Cloud developer: As a commerce cloud developer, you’ll develop high-scale composable commerce apps with headless APIs. You may also integrate shopping experiences with Experience Cloud. The average cloud developer salary is $96,044 annually [4].

• Marketing Cloud developer: As a marketing cloud developer, you’ll create high-quality experiences with Salesforce's Marketing Cloud automation platform through APIs, software development kits (SDKs), and programming languages. The average salary for this role is $98,293 annually [5].

• Slack developer: As a Slack developer, you’ll develop, integrate, and customize workspaces and Slack applications. The average salary for this role is $168,000 annually [6]. 

• MuleSoft developer: As a MuleSoft developer, you’ll be a leader in designing, implementing, and deploying APIs and integration projects using low-code and coding tools. The average salary of a MuleSoft developer is $95,289 [7].

• Tableau developer: As a Tableau developer, you’ll integrate Tableau into apps via JavaScript and build workflows connecting data through SDKs and APIs. The typical Tableau developer salary is $105,047 annually [8]. 

Next steps

Salesforce is a software-as-a-service offering that provides businesses with custom CRM software. As a Salesforce developer, you can create custom Salesforce applications designed for your organization. A career as a Salesforce developer puts you into an in-demand field with various specializations. On top of that, you can sometimes enter this field without a degree and earn a great salary. To learn more about being a Salesforce developer, you can start with a general overview of the software with Salesforce’s Reports, Dashboards, and Customer Success in Salesforce course on Coursera.