Lead Engineer, Systems Engineering

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Job Details

Lead Engineer – Platform

Job Summary:

The Salesforce Platform Lead will serve as the technical owner and strategic driver of Cencora's Salesforce platform with a primary focus on enterprise release management, platform health maintenance, and long-term platform modernization . This role is responsible for establishing and continuously maturing the processes, tooling, governance, and engineering standards that ensure Salesforce releases are delivered safely, reliably, and at scale across a complex multi-team, multi-cloud Salesforce environment. The Salesforce Platform Lead will lead platform lifecycle planning — including org health assessments, technical debt remediation, legacy modernization initiatives, and proactive adoption of Salesforce's evolving platform capabilities. Acting as the central authority on platform stability and evolution , this leader partners with development teams, IT operations, security, and senior business stakeholders to keep the Salesforce platform performant, compliant, secure, and future-ready. The ideal candidate is a seasoned Salesforce professional with deep expertise in release engineering, DevOps practices, platform governance, and a proven track record of leading large-scale Salesforce modernization programs.

What You'll Do:

Salesforce Release Analysis & enablement

• •Lead the Release process for Salesforce changes, ensuring all releases are properly reviewed, approved, risk-assessed, and communicated to stakeholders.
• •Manage Salesforce tri-annual release readiness — coordinating impact assessments, sandbox preview testing, feature evaluation, stakeholder communications, and production readiness sign-offs for every Salesforce seasonal release (Spring, Summer, Winter).
• •Define quality gates and automated testing requirements (Apex unit tests, Jest, Provar, static code analysis) that must be satisfied prior to any production deployment.

🔧 Platform Maintenance & Operational Excellence

• •Own Salesforce org health across all environments — continuously monitoring platform performance, governor limit consumption, storage utilization, API usage, and system stability.
• •Lead platform health assessments and technical audits , identifying risks related to technical debt, deprecated features, security vulnerabilities, and configuration drift.
• •Manage sandbox strategy and environment lifecycle including sandbox provisioning, refresh scheduling, data masking, and environment-specific configuration management.
• •Oversee Salesforce license management and org optimization — tracking user license utilization, feature license consumption, storage management, and cost optimization opportunities.
• •Establish and maintain platform monitoring and alerting frameworks using Salesforce Shield Event Monitoring, Health Check, Optimizer, and third-party observability tools.
• •Drive incident management and root cause analysis (RCA) for platform outages, deployment failures, and critical production defects — implementing preventive measures to reduce recurrence.
• •Govern data management practices within the platform including data archival strategies, duplicate management, large data volume (LDV) handling, and data quality frameworks.
• •Ensure security and compliance maintenance including regular reviews of profiles, permission sets, sharing rules, connected apps, and org-wide security settings in alignment with HIPAA, SOX, and Cencora IT security standards.
• •Manage Salesforce Trust site monitoring and communication of planned maintenance windows and unplanned outages to internal stakeholders.
• •Coordinate third-party ISV and AppExchange app management including version upgrades, compatibility testing, license renewals, and vendor relationship oversight.

Platform Modernization

• •Define and execute a multi-year Salesforce platform modernization roadmap , prioritizing migration from legacy configurations, deprecated technologies, and outdated customizations to modern Salesforce platform paradigms.
• •Lead the migration from Classic to Lightning Experience , Aura to Lightning Web Components (LWC) , and legacy Process Builder/Workflow Rules to Salesforce Flow — ensuring systematic, low-risk modernization at scale.
• •Drive adoption of Salesforce DX (source-driven development) , unlocked packages , and 2nd Generation Packaging (2GP) to modernize the development and deployment model.
• •Evaluate and implement Salesforce AI and Einstein capabilities (e.g., Einstein Copilot, Predictive AI, Agentforce) as part of the platform modernization strategy.
• •Champion the transition to modular, package-based architecture to improve deployment independence, reduce org complexity, and enable team scalability.
• •Partner with enterprise architecture and IT leadership to align Salesforce modernization initiatives with broader digital transformation and technology strategy.
• •Build and maintain a platform modernization backlog , tracking technical debt remediation items, deprecated feature migrations, and innovation initiatives with clear prioritization and business value articulation.
• •Drive developer experience modernization — improving tooling, local development environments, code quality standards, and developer productivity frameworks across the Salesforce engineering teams.

Team Leadership & Enablement

• •Lead, mentor, and develop a cross-functional team of Salesforce Senior Developers, Release Engineers, and Administrators across multiple functional domains (Sales, DevOps, Experience Cloud, Data Cloud, Sales Cycle).
• •Establish team-wide engineering standards , coding guidelines, peer review processes, and knowledge-sharing practices.
• •Foster a culture of operational excellence, continuous improvement, and innovation within the Salesforce platform team.
• •Drive Salesforce release training and enablement programs to upskill development teams on new platform capabilities, release readiness, and modernization technologies.

Stakeholder & Vendor Engagement

• •Serve as the primary escalation point and technical spokesperson for all Salesforce platform release, maintenance, and modernization matters with IT leadership, business stakeholders, and executive sponsors.
• •Manage the Salesforce vendor relationship — liaising with Salesforce Account Executives, Technical Account Managers (TAM), and Premier Support teams to maximize platform value and resolve critical issues.
• •Lead platform roadmap reviews and steering committee presentations , articulating modernization progress, platform health status, and strategic recommendations.
• •Collaborate with security, compliance, and risk teams to ensure platform changes meet enterprise governance and regulatory requirements.

Basic Qualifications:

• •Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).
• •Working knowledge of Salesforce administration, configuration, customization, and declarative platform capabilities.
• •8+ years of Salesforce platform experience, including at least 3+ years in a platform lead, Salesforce release management, or architect role .
• •Deep expertise in Salesforce release management including CI/CD pipeline ownership, deployment tooling (Copado, SFDX, GitHub Actions), and change management governance.
• •Strong hands-on knowledge of Salesforce DevOps practices : source control, branching strategies, automated testing, environment management, and deployment automation.
• •Proven experience with Salesforce org health management : Health Check, Optimizer, Event Monitoring, governor limits, and perform