Principal Solution Architect Salesforce (m/f), Molsheim

Zwei Standbeine: Chemie und Pharma. Gemeinsame Werte. Die Verbindung von Tradition und Fortschritt. Das ist Merck. Innovativ, spezialisiert, international.

Your role

• As Principal Salesforce Solution Architect you will be responsible to co-design and drive a capability-driven technology roadmap for our Life Science (LS) business. You will regularly interact with the LS commercial heads and executive steerco and act as primary expert on technical and business aspects of the Salesforce application landscape. You will bring thought leadership in innovation and bring the best technology and processes for our Life Science business.
• You will work with and steer an internal and external team of Salesforce solution architects, technical architects and development teams to deliver best-class Salesforce solutions for the Life Science Business.
• You lead and set priorities for a team of Salesforce solution architects to deliver a continuous pipeline of enhancements and projects.
• You co-drive the development of capability-based technology roadmap for Salesforce, leading into a portfolio of projects to build or strengthen prioritized capabilities and lead PoCs (new functionalities / capability building and innovation areas) and demo to the business.
• You stay ahead of the curve with innovations, educate yourself and enable others on current and emerging technologies. Drive the same spirit in your team – be a trailblazer in your area. You consult with Product Owners and various stakeholders on the business side to understand their technical and business challenges related and translate this into a focused delivery and innovation roadmap.
• You propose best-in-class solutions leveraging standard functionalities as much as possible (zero to low coding), strive for solution harmonization between business units and act as principal architect: be an active member on the LS Architecture review Board, arbitrate architectural decisions and trade-offs, review the solution designs put forward by your team members and ensure a consistent solution architecture according to industry standards.
• You ensure the solution built by the technical development teams meets the described acceptance criteria and fits the solution design before handing it over to the business (final quality assurance).

Job can be also located in the Netherlands, Belgium or Spain.

Your profile

• 10+ years’ experience in solution design & technical delivery of Software As A Service platforms / equivalent; whereof minimum 5 years in (minimum1, preferable more) Salesforce products (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud).
• Thorough understanding of best practices and latest OOB features to be able to steer decisions and trade-offs between no-code and custom code and aim to constantly reduce technical debt in our Salesforce landscape.
• Minimum one relevant and up to date Salesforce Architect Certification (preferably Data Architect) and willingness to add additional relevant certifications (with organizational support).
• Experience leading customer-facing requirement gathering and exploration sessions to conceptualize and design complex business solutions.
• Experience in writing functional requirements, preferably in a user story (map) format.
• Experience mapping and documenting solution design / diagrams (e.g. in tools such as Elements.cloud).
• Familiarity with data architecture/schema, including relational data models and sql syntax, documentation of data models, and data flows.
• Strong understanding of implementing web services such as SOAP and REST APIs with a good understanding of interfaces across enterprise landscapes: e.g. SAP ERP, MDM etc.
• Experience in managing Salesforce platform in terms of ensuring performance, security, development best-practices and technical architecture.
• Highly efficient team player with the ability to also work independently in a fast-paced, fluid environment.
• Experience in leading a team (of Salesforce experts); people management skills.
• Comfortable in a mentoring role (towards Solution Architects on the team) and passionate about sharing knowledge and developing team members to grow.
• Experience in Application / Platform Management (incident mgt, service mgt, compliance, governance…) –good understanding of ITIL processes or certification.
• Excellent presentation and verbal skills with technical, non-technical, end-user, and executive audiences – ability to adjust your message to your audience.
• Excellent command of written and spoken English.
• Experience working in a global environment with remote teams.
• Willingness and ability to travel internationally for workshops and meetings.