Solutions Architect

Onsite requirements - this role requires 3 days onsite and up to 2 days of remote work per week. The office is located in the Greater Madison, WI area.

Relocation assistance is available if located outside of reasonable commuting distance.

***This is a direct hire role. Only USC or GC may apply***

Solutions Architect - Customer Experience (Salesforce Focus)

Objective

The Solutions Architect plays a pivotal role in our clients IT team, defining and governing the technical vision for the Customer Experience ecosystem. This position leads architecture and roadmap planning, with Salesforce as the strategic CRM platform within an evolving Customer 360 architecture.

The ecosystem integrates contact center technologies (e.g., Genesys Cloud) and enterprise data platforms (e.g., Snowflake) to deliver comprehensive end-to-end customer experience capabilities.

The Solutions Architect ensures solutions meet business needs, prioritize Salesforce-native features and established patterns, and align with enterprise architecture, security, and compliance standards.

Responsibilities

1. Lead Salesforce platform architecture and define the target-state CRM vision, aligned with enterprise architecture and business strategy.
2. Define and guide the Salesforce platform strategy and roadmap within the broader Customer 360 ecosystem, including architectural analysis and decision-making on data ownership, system boundaries, and phased CRM evolution.
3. Lead end-to-end Customer Experience architecture across Salesforce, contact center platforms (e.g., Genesys Cloud), enterprise data platforms (e.g., Snowflake), and supporting integration layers.
4. Partner with the Integration team to define and govern integration architecture and patterns across Salesforce and the CX ecosystem, including API strategy, middleware, event-driven approaches, data synchronization, and system boundaries—ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture and platform roadmap.
5. Establish Salesforce architecture standards and guardrails, covering data model strategy, security and sharing models, identity/SSO patterns, environment strategy, release governance, and extensibility approaches.
6. Prioritize and advocate for Salesforce-native and out-of-the-box capabilities, while establishing clear criteria for custom development, AppExchange solutions, or external services.
7. Collaborate with Product Owners, Engineering teams, and Salesforce Admin/Developer resources to translate business requirements into scalable platform solutions, ensuring adherence to architecture standards and platform constraints.
8. Evaluate Salesforce-native capabilities and AppExchange solutions; guide build-versus-buy decisions and support proof-of-concept efforts to validate architectural approaches and scalability.
9. Provide architecture guidance to vendors and implementation partners; review solution designs for quality, scalability, platform alignment, and compliance.
10. Document and communicate architecture through solution diagrams, decision logs, customer journey and workflow models, and executive-level presentations.
11. Ensure solutions comply with relevant frameworks (e.g., TCPA, GDPR) and collaborate with business and legal stakeholders to identify, assess, and mitigate compliance risks.

Job Characteristics

Scope and Complexity Involves operations across all areas of the company. Activities are largely non-standardized and highly varied, requiring information development through analytical methods.

Decision Making Performed with some supervision, following guidance and broad direction.

Judgment and Freedom to Act Requires a high level of judgment; freedom to determine work methods for unstructured options, with potential need for top management approval.

Problem Solving Involves significant problem solving; frequently requires creating new methods, policies, and/or procedures. Problems are often undefined and may require research.

Direct Reports 0

Requirements

Required Degree Bachelor's degree from an accredited four-year college or university.

Certifications (Preferred)

• TOGAF or related architecture certification
• Cloud certification (Azure or AWS)
• Salesforce certifications (e.g., Administrator, App Builder, Sales/Service Consultant, Application Architect, System Architect)

Experience 5–10 years total experience, including:

• 5+ years in Salesforce/CRM architecture or leading CRM platform delivery (as architect, technical lead, or principal consultant)

Skills and Knowledge

Salesforce Platform Architecture (Core)

• Proven experience designing and guiding solutions on the Salesforce platform, ideally across Sales Cloud and/or Service Cloud (Data Cloud exposure is a plus).
• Deep understanding of Salesforce architecture principles: data model design, security/sharing models, identity/SSO, environment strategy, and extensibility patterns.
• Ability to provide technical governance and oversight for Salesforce implementation teams (internal and external).
• Strong knowledge of platform constraints and trade-offs (e.g., security/sharing, automation limits, reporting/data model considerations, governor limits), with emphasis on leveraging native capabilities first.

Customer Experience Ecosystem

• Strong knowledge of end-to-end customer experience architecture, including CRM, contact center, and integration patterns across voice, messaging, and digital channels.
• Experience with Genesys Cloud strongly preferred (or comparable cloud contact center platforms), including routing flows, IVR design, agent workflows, wrap-up codes, campaigns, and compliance considerations.

Integration & Data

• Expertise in integration architecture and best practices, including connections between Salesforce, contact center platforms, and enterprise data platforms (e.g., Snowflake).
• Experience designing data synchronization and customer interaction history models across systems.

Communication & Leadership

• Excellent ability to translate technical architecture into business outcomes and communicate effectively with executives, business leaders, and engineering teams.
• Proven experience producing architecture artifacts (e.g., reference architectures, solution diagrams, decision frameworks, standards).