The IDC projects that 4.2M new Salesforce-related jobs will be created between 2019 and 2024. A portion of these roles are Salesforce developer positions. But what’s the job of a Salesforce developer, and how do professionals transition into these roles? These questions– and workforce evolutions– are close to my personal experience. I had a conversation with Alba Rivas to discuss these topics, as they’re part of her journey as well. In this post, we’ll discuss her history with the platform, and she’ll outline what a Salesforce developer job looks like today. Alba will also give you tips and tricks to successfully get started yourself.
Alba began her path to Salesforce by studying telecommunications engineering, and she’s been developing software since she graduated. Early in her career, she worked on applications primarily built with Python and Java. But in 2014, Alba was contacted by a company who built apps on the Salesforce platform to sell through Salesforce’s app marketplace, AppExchange. The company was looking for back-end developers. The native back-end language used in Salesforce is Apex, an object-oriented domain-specific language similar to Java or C++. Because there weren’t many Salesforce developers in the market yet, the company was looking for developers with object-oriented programming skills. Alba told me that initially, she was reluctant to take the job. She was skeptical of a platform that had created its own programming languages. Ultimately, Alba finally decided to accept the offer and give it a chance.