Director of Customer Platform - Salesforce

Strategic Leadership

• Define, own, and execute the strategic vision and roadmap for the customer platform to align with business objectives.
• Contribute to regional and global strategic conversations about the direction, strategy, and approach of platform technical excellence.
• Drive innovation and best practice in the use and deployment of Salesforce and adjacent technologies.
• Promote the strategic importance and benefits of the customer platform across the organisation to drive wider adoption and optimisation.

Team Leadership and People Management

• Lead and look after a team of specialists, including architects, developers, administrators, and consultants, often with Salesforce skills, whose work spans multiple customer lenses including consumer, client, partner, foundations, data platform, and AI.
• Govern a distributed group of people who sit across a number of squads, providing them a strong functional home, clear standards, and consistent line leadership.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement and professional development, and promote high team morale and engagement.
• Oversee knowledge management across the platform practice and the wider engineering community to ensure a high standard of expertise and information sharing.

Operational and Delivery Management

• Manage the team operationally, including planning, prioritisation, capacity, and ways of working across the squads the specialists support.
• Oversee and be responsible for the planning, execution, and delivery of platform projects and programmes.
• Ensure delivery on time, within scope, and within budget, using agile methodologies and tooling.
• Ensure the scalability, performance, and reliability of the platform, and manage integration with other enterprise systems and third-party applications.

Working with Engineering

• Work closely with engineering to ensure platform developments align with overall technical architecture and governance frameworks.
• Collaborate with data teams to leverage analytics and data-driven insights for platform enhancement and decision-making.
• Share insights and best practice internally and with the externally facing Professional Services team to enhance service offerings.

Stakeholder Engagement and Collaboration

• Maintain robust communication with business stakeholders to align platform capability with business needs.
• Foster collaboration across departments, including business solutions, data, engineering, operations, and client services, to maximise the value of platform implementations.

Security, Governance, and Compliance

• Ensure platforms comply with regulatory standards and internal governance policies.
• Ensure stringent security governance across the platform footprint to protect organisational data and maintain trust.
• Implement and enforce best practice in technology resilience, recovery, and security.

Performance and Optimisation

• Set, own, and exceed performance targets related to the adoption and operationalisation of the customer platform.
• Use data-driven insights to optimise platform performance and drive continuous improvement.
• Monitor and track critical business and financial KPIs, ensuring benefits realisation for the platform investment is identified, tracked, realised, and communicated.

Commercial and Vendor Management

• Manage the commercial aspects of the platform, including budget controls and financial planning.
• Own the vendor relationships and renewals, including Salesforce, LINK Mobility, and other ecosystem partners, and oversee third-party engagements to ensure cost-effectiveness and alignment with business objectives.
• Engage in negotiations with Salesforce and other external partners to secure advantageous terms and manage ongoing supplier relationships.
• Own the recruitment of new team members and manage relationships with suppliers and vendors.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience Required

• Deep, demonstrable Salesforce solution and technical architecture expertise, ideally Salesforce-certified at Application and/or System Architect level, with CTA an advantage, and with a track record of designing large, multi-cloud Salesforce estates.
• Experience integrating and managing adjacent tooling and ecosystem components alongside Salesforce (e.g., messaging/communications platforms such as LINK Mobility and other integration technologies).
• Minimum 10 years in large-scale enterprise software development and programme management, with a strong focus on Salesforce platforms.
• Proven track record leading Salesforce services across CRM, Marketing, Data Services, Revenue Cloud/CPQ, billing, and Loyalty.
• Extensive experience delivering programmes and products powered by Salesforce, including CRM, Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Revenue Cloud, and Customer Data Platform.
• Proven ability to lead and govern a distributed team whose members are embedded across multiple squads, providing consistent standards and line leadership.
• Strong leadership qualities, able to motivate, mentor, and lead a diverse team, and to empower each member to contribute meaningfully.
• Strong people-management and operational skills, including planning, prioritisation, capacity management, and ways of working.
• Ability to balance hands-on architectural authority with people leadership and enablement.
• Experience working closely with engineering and translating business and product needs into requirements within an agile methodology (epics and user stories).
• Excellent communication skills, able to present complex information to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong risk management skills and the ability to develop and implement mitigation strategies.
• Understanding of information security and data privacy legislation and its implementation in a multi-cloud environment.
• Commercial acumen, innovative thinking, and the ability to generate ideas and draw them out of others.
• Ability to bridge communications between technical and business-focused groups, and to build relationships across multiple groups and levels.
• Self-motivated, goal- and outcome-oriented, with thoroughness, attention to detail, and a commitment to continuous learning.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and to work independently and take initiative.