Role Summary (The Why Now)

Salesforce is a foundational platform powering Avalara’s revenue engine, customer experience, and operational workflows across Sales, Service, Marketing, and Quote-to-Cash. As Avalara scales its product portfolio, expands into new markets, and embeds AI across customer and operational systems, the complexity and criticality of the Salesforce ecosystem continues to grow.

The Principal Salesforce Platform Architect defines and governs the enterprise architecture strategy for Salesforce, ensuring the platform operates as a scalable, coherent system rather than a collection of independent implementations. This role establishes the roadmap, standards, and design patterns that guide all Salesforce development and integration across the enterprise.

By aligning Salesforce architecture to business outcomes and enterprise priorities, this role ensures the platform supports predictable revenue operations, high-quality customer experiences, and efficient, AI-enabled execution at scale.

How This Role Elevates Avalara

For the Business

• Ensures Salesforce supports scalable revenue growth and pipeline predictability
• Reduces operational friction across Lead-to-Sale, Q2C, and Customer Experience workflows
• Enables faster, more consistent delivery through reusable architecture patterns

For the Customer

• Improves consistency and quality of customer interactions across Sales and Service
• Enables better data integrity and CX360 visibility
• Supports faster onboarding, support resolution, and expansion experiences

For the Enterprise

• Establishes a governed Salesforce architecture across domains
• Reduces duplication, customization sprawl, and technical debt
• Aligns Salesforce with enterprise data, integration, and AI strategies

Key Responsibilities

Salesforce Platform Architecture Strategy

• Define and maintain the enterprise Salesforce architecture strategy and roadmap
• Establish platform guardrails, design principles, and capability models
• Ensure Salesforce architecture aligns with Lead-to-Sale, Q2C, and Customer Experience strategies
• Partner with Enterprise Architects to align platform strategy with business capability roadmaps

Platform Governance & Standards

• Define and enforce standards for:
• Data models
• Object design
• Integration patterns
• Security and access controls
• Environment and release management
• Establish reusable design patterns to reduce custom development and improve scalability
• Lead architecture reviews for Salesforce-related initiatives

Solution Enablement & Delivery Alignment

• Guide Solution Architects and delivery teams in applying Salesforce architecture standards
• Ensure consistency of system design across delivery pods
• Translate architecture runway into actionable guidance for development teams
• Reduce rework by ensuring design alignment early in delivery cycles

Integration & Data Alignment

• Define integration patterns between Salesforce and:
• Billing and finance systems
• Product and usage platforms
• Customer Data Platform (CDP)
• Support and CX systems
• Ensure Salesforce participates as a governed component of the enterprise data architecture
• Align Salesforce data models with Customer360 / CX360 strategies

AI Enablement Within Salesforce

• Define how AI capabilities (Einstein, external AI platforms, CDP-driven signals) are embedded into Salesforce workflows
• Enable AI-driven use cases such as:
• Lead and opportunity scoring
• Sales prioritization
• Case routing and support automation
• Customer insight and recommendations
• Ensure AI implementations are explainable, governed, and aligned to enterprise standards

Platform Rationalization & Technical Debt Reduction

• Identify and eliminate redundant functionality across Salesforce and adjacent tools
• Reduce customization complexity and improve maintainability
• Drive consolidation of overlapping capabilities into scalable platform solutions

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Serve as the enterprise authority for Salesforce architecture
• Partner with:
• Marketing, Sales, RevOps
• Finance and Q2C teams
• Customer Experience and Support
• Data & AI platform teams
• Raise architecture maturity across delivery teams and stakeholders
• Participate in enterprise architecture governance forums

12-Month Success Signals

• Salesforce architecture strategy and roadmap formally adopted across domains
• Reduction in redundant customizations and overlapping platform capabilities
• Measurable improvement in platform stability, scalability, and delivery consistency
• Clear and reusable integration patterns adopted by delivery teams
• AI-enabled Salesforce workflows deployed with measurable business impact
• Positive stakeholder feedback from Sales, RevOps, and Customer Experience leadership

Bar Raiser Expectations

This role is expected to:

• Hold high standards for platform architecture quality, clarity, and scalability
• Exercise strong judgment in balancing speed, flexibility, and long-term sustainability
• Raise the technical and operational maturity of Salesforce delivery teams
• Challenge fragmented or duplicative solutions with data and architectural discipline
• Leave the Salesforce ecosystem stronger, simpler, and more scalable than it was found

AI Bar Raiser Expectations

• Demonstrate applied AI capability within Salesforce and related workflows
• Identify and implement AI use cases that improve measurable outcomes (conversion, productivity, resolution time)
• Ensure AI solutions are explainable, secure, and aligned to enterprise governance
• Quantify AI impact (time saved, efficiency gains, revenue influence)
• Elevate AI capability across platform and delivery teams

Qualifications (Required)

• B.S. in Computer Science or Engineering
• 12+ years of experience in enterprise systems architecture, including Salesforce platform architecture
• Deep expertise in Salesforce ecosystem (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, platform capabilities)
• Experience defining platform standards, data models, and integration architectures
• Experience working with enterprise data platforms, integration layers, and AI-enabled workflows
• Strong understanding of revenue operations, customer lifecycle, and enterprise system design
• Proven ability to influence cross-functional stakeholders and drive enterprise-wide architectural decisions

AI is embedded in our workflows, decision-making, and products. Success here requires embracing AI as an essential capability.

• You’ll bring experience using AI and AI-related technologies, ready to thrive here.

• You’ll apply AI every day to business challenges - improving efficiency, contributing solutions, and driving results for your team, our company, and our customers.

• You’ll grow with AI by staying curious about new trends and best practices, and by sharing what you learn so others can benefit too.

Total Rewards

In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses.

Health & Wellness
Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance.

Inclusive culture and diversity
Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship.

We’re defining the relationship between tax and tech.

We’ve already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing over 54 billion customer API calls and over 6.6 million tax returns a year. Our growth is real - we're a billion dollar business - and we’re not slowing down until we’ve achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.

We’re bright, innovative, and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we’ve designed, that empowers our people to win. We’ve been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.

We’re An Equal Opportunity Employer

Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company — we don’t want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.