Become A Salesforce Developer In 2024

Do you aspire to become a Salesforce Developer? Are you stuck on what steps you should take? Are you a backend developer and looking for a kick-start career in Salesforce?

Probably, you will get all the answers after going through this post. To start with, In 2019, Salesforce was recognized as the world’s biggest CRM. The position continues for six consecutive years. During this time, over 150,000 popular organizations generated employment of 3.3 million and the trend will continue in 2024.

Salesforce is a cloud platform for managing sales, customer service, and marketing. The key products for these purposes are Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud.

Nowadays Commerce Cloud (for eCommerce), Financial Services Cloud (for financial organizations), and Health Cloud (for healthcare organizations) are in high demand. To enrich their products, SFDC (which stands for Salesforce.com Inc.) offers additional components, for example, CPQ & Billing used for automatic price quote generation and invoicing.

To run apps SFDC launched Force.com, the PaaS product for developers. It was renamed the lighting platform.

At present SFDC has another ambitious product  that allows collecting, processing, and real-time managing data from the devices integrated into an IoT system.

When it comes to joining the Salesforce Dev Community, you need not only to develop skills but also to do some certification courses. Let’s dive into a step wise procedure to become a skilful Salesforce Developer.

Who is a Salesforce developer?

To start with, let’s focus on finding –what’s a Salesforce developer? In general terms, a Salesforce developer is a programmer who builds Salesforce applications across various PaaS (Platform as a Service) platforms. 

The developers have working experience with Salesforce works and queries. The developer is hired by a customer/client to customize Salesforce as per the organization’s work. The developers manage and optimize the technical aspect of an enterprise’s Salesforce instance. The exercise is done to improve the business goals through custom development in Salesforce. They mainly work on three technologies:

  • Apex: The proprietary programming language of Salesforce that share good similarities with Java
  • Visualforce: A mark-up language used for building custom Salesforce pages. It resembles HTML.
  • Lightning Component Framework: A competent framework for User Interface development having a similar interface to Angular JS/React.

With the help of these tools, the salesforce developers can build custom applications and processes with Salesforce. The main work of a developer is to create visual layouts to integrate different platforms.

Steps to Become a Salesforce Developer

Becoming a Salesforce developer is a process. As Salesforce is a CRM, much coding is not required to be done but a thorough and deep understanding of the concepts is required. Here are some key learning areas where a Salesforce developer must focus.

How to become salesforce developer

source: janbasktraining

Relevant Salesforce Certifications are a must

It is important to learn and practice Salesforce Admin. Both theoretical experience and hands-on real experience count. Invest your time in understanding the database concepts and applying them in a real-life situation. Here are the 3 different certifications that you need to pass.

Get Platform Developer I (PD I) Certification

The certification is mainly focused on Apex, APIs, and Visualforce. For developers there are two levels of certificates in which the following topics are covered:

  • Learning Apex basics
  • OOPS concepts
  • SOQL
  • SOSL
  • Apex DML
  • Database Methods
  • Apex Triggers
  • Apex Testing
  • Batch Apex
  • Visualforce
  • APIs & Integrations
  • Deployment Process

Integration of Salesforce

To become a highly competitive Salesforce developer, learning integration of Salesforce with other front and backend packages is required. You will get the direct idea to personalize salesforce for your specific needs.

Also Read: The Ultimate Node.js Developer Roadmap In 2024

Join Salesforce Stack Exchange

Along with joining Salesforce Certification Course you should also try to form questions and get answers through experts. One of the easiest sources for getting expert answers to your salesforce queries is Salesforce Stack Exchange. Along with asking your specific queries, you can also search for similar queries to further widen your scope of knowledge on that particular aspect. The platform is populated with several highly valuable queries and detailed answers that can directly help you to improve your professional capabilities.

Join Local Salesforce Developer Community Group

A good Salesforce Developer Training Course will help you crack the exams and gain professional skills but you also need to make the right connections in the industry. Salesforce Trailblazer Community is a valuable group of Salesforce professionals who openly share the knowledge to build connections and help each other grow.

You can start attending your Trailblazer community group to make friends with Salesforce professionals and experts. You can find a variety of people related to the Salesforce community- new learners, professionals, experts, trainers, and even recruiters. The group meet-ups will help you enhance your knowledge, seek and share the latest industry information, make new friends in the industry and even get a nice job with a good pay scale.

Find a Mentor to Overcome Technical Bottlenecks

Non-programmers without keen coding knowledge can find it challenging to scale the initial journey in the Salesforce industry. They may feel lost midway through the process. Understanding coding concepts would be an uphill task for them. Lots of these so-called difficulties and bottlenecks happen due to the mindset. Instead of getting overwhelmed by a whole lot of things, try concentrating your full energy on completing smaller portions and gradually moving ahead to the more difficult level.

Key Skills Required to become an Efficient Salesforce Developer

1. Programming Skills

To become a successful salesforce developer you need to have a good understanding of MVC designing and be comfortable with coding and development tasks. Other related elements like Bootstrap, jQuery, etc. Also, play a role in the Salesforce project environment. Likewise, other types of technical knowledge are also required. Here’s the list:

Concepts related to Fundamental object-oriented programming

  • A primary knowledge of C# and JavaScript
  • MVC style of designing
  • Data management and modeling
  • Fundamentals of Visualforce and Apex
  • Lightning Framework
  • Developer Console
  • SQL, Web Services, and Salesforce Object Query Language
  • Bootstrap, JQuery, and LWC

2. Analytical Skills

You would need to logically understand the customer requirements and analyze them deeply. So detailed analytical capabilities and a keen ability to translate it into relevant design/code is another quality that you must have to start your Salesforce career and build a long-term career in salesforce.

3. Communication Skills

Salesforce projects require teamwork. So you need exceptional team skills. Seamless collaboration with people and an ability to orchestrate your efforts with other members of the team are also important. You should be able to put across your point by translating the technical concepts into jargon-free general terms. Likewise, keeping your discussions to the point without missing out on any important piece of information is another skill that distinguishes you as a competent salesforce developer.

4. Problem-Solving Skills

Just like any other digital product, Salesforce is not free from errors or bugs. For that, you need exceptional problems solving capabilities and practical debugging knowledge. It will allow you to overcome the challenges quickly and maintain the flow of the process.

5. Logical Skills

A logical review of a situation and innovating sustainable practical solutions is a foundational skill for any Salesforce developer. A Salesforce developer should be able to reason in a logical way to arrive at a practically viable solution.

Also Read: The Ultimate Python Developer Roadmap In 2024

Roles and Responsibilities of a Salesforce Developer

You will notice that the roles and duties of a Salesforce developer are similar to those of other professional developers, but for clarity and completeness, let’s go over them in the context of Salesforce itself:

  • Analyze what the needs of the users are, then design, test, and develop software that meets those needs
  • Design Salesforce solutions and create effective project plans. Add value to the three stages of project work; definition, development, deployment
  • Suggest new software upgrades for the customers’ existing apps, programs, and systems
  • Act in advance of the changing business and technological landscapes of Salesforce and .Net/Java platforms, and adapt accordingly
  • Design every part of any needed application or a system, then plan how those parts will mesh together
  • Create and implement programs for use over the Internet as well as for in-house users over the company intranet.
  • Deal with possible inconsistencies in the quality of data and create processes that will overcome any potential system deficiencies
  • Take the lead with other programmers by creating a variety of models and diagrams (for example, flowcharts) that will instruct them on how to write additional needed software code
  • Make sure that a program will continue to function normally through routine software maintenance as well as testing
  • Document every part of the company’s entire inventory of applications and systems for future reference, especially in the context of upgrades and maintenance
  • Collaborate with other computer specialists to create optimum software

A Salesforce developer needs to establish a rapport with the client and ascertain what the latter’s expectations are for Salesforce implementation and operation. For starters, Salesforce developers need to understand how the client intends to use the software, identifying the needed core functionality.

Salesforce Developers Salary – Latest Trends 2024

The good news is, that hard work pays off and the Salesforce developer gets a handsome salary. According to Glassdoor, a Salesforce developer in the United States earns an average of $87,000 a year. There are also opportunities for extra bonuses and perks.

Factors such as location and experience level can influence the salary figure. But regardless of the actual exact figure, the position is a potentially lucrative career choice.

Having been convinced on the salary part now the question arises “how does one prepare for such a challenging career?”

What are the prospects of a Salesforce Developer?

Becoming a  Salesforce developer is a new field in comparison to becoming a full stack developer, frontend developer, or Java Developer. As the IoT technologies grow and the focus on CRM-based applications increases, the demand of Salesforce developers is likely to increase.

If one can extrapolate from these optimistic forecasts, it’s safe to say that a Salesforce developer will have a safe career.

How to start your journey as a Salesforce Developer?

Have you ever attended the job interviews of a Salesforce Developer? Take it as a task, and list out the questions which you could not answer. Try to find out the answers in the Salesforce official tutorials. Searching in Google and referring to free web resources is also a good option for beginners.

To save you time (and frustration!), we’ve researched the best Salesforce training resources and organized them into the following categories:

By making incremental improvements in your knowledge, you will soon reach to the stag where Salesforce companies would like to hire you!

Also Read: No Code / Low Code Development Platform Trends in 2024

FAQs – Salesforce Developer Roadmap 2024

1. What are the main reasons why you opt to become Salesforce developer in 2024?

Salesforce development makes use of query based methods that are stored in the system. These queries help in fetching the data from the organization’s data. The main reason for the newbies to choose Salesforce 

  • You don’t like to develop from scratch

Lightning Platform has many ready-made components for development, which significantly simplifies a developer’s job.

  • You like to dive into a customer’s business

Salesforce development requires exploring a customer’s business processes. Moreover, understanding a customer’s business will be a part of your job duties and will influence your career growth.

  • You like both back-end and front-end development

Salesforce app developers work both on the server side and create user interfaces.

2. How much time is required to become a certified Salesforce Developer?

The ideal time to become a Salesforce developer is 14 to 16 months. However, the task depends on the person, the time one is ready to invest, and the skills they have. It will be easier for the people who possess the basic programming knowledge and know about the CRM packages.

3. What is the cost to become a Salesforce developer in 2024?

Salesforce Certification cost varies depending on the exam level. Entry-level exams cost $200 whereas Architect exams cost $400.You can always visit the Salesforce official website to know the individual certification cost, the eligibility criteria, and other details. Some companies also help you with the certification course so you can check with them for training and certification.

4. Can I be a Salesforce developer with no experience?

Yes. If you have an understanding of databases and basic programming skills, you can become a Salesforce developer. In this case, you might have to enroll yourself in a training course that provides detailed knowledge, and practical exposure and prepares you to pass the certification (Helping in practicing with question and answers)

5. Is being a Salesforce developer a good career?

As Salesforce is an upcoming field in the CRM industry and rapidly growing, you have a brighter scope in the future as a Salesforce developer. If you belong to the dev community and are not interested in doing core coding, you can upgrade your skills and enter this field. For the fresh candidates, it will be a critical decision of their career, therefore knowing about Salesforce, its development, working environment, future aspects and all this is important.

Also Read:  Android Mobile App Development Roadmap 2024

Wrap Up

Salesforce Developers are in high demand in 2024. To become a Salesforce Consultant or a Salesforce Architect, you must have high patience because developing skills and attaining the expertise level will require practical exposure . For any candidate, it takes time.

On the globe of Salesforce Development & Customization Services, the task force of developers hold a significant role. Newbies have got ample of opportunities and probably sky I the limit for the suitable candidate.

One third of the Salesforce tasks are outsourced to software development companies like RedBlink Technologies, who efficiently manage the remote task and serve the various industries.

The information provided above and the aforementioned steps will help you to get your first job soon as a Salesforce Developer.

Best Wishes for your future!