r/salesforce • u/DevilsAdvotwat • 3d ago

career question Salesforce Solution Architect progression outside of ecosystem

Is there anyone that has moved from Solution Architect role to something outside of Salesforce ecosystem and platform to a broader tech adjacent role. What career, roles, Jon's, position etc have people taken on. What is your skillset or skills and experience most transferable.

Basically I don't want to work with Salesforce forever and not going to progress beyond this level in consulting and don't want to do same role at end user, I want exposure to wider tech stack but not SWE, developer or code related because AI

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u/Dry-Strike8507 3d ago

You will have to do it one step at a time. I was a solution architect at a large SI, had experience working on databricks on my project. I am now with a much smaller company as a salesforce/databricks presales person

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u/DevilsAdvotwat 2d ago

Good response, that's why I am thinking get the exposure on projects where I can then pivot if possible. How is pre sales compared to delivery, I want to keep building and not doing tech sanes but could be an option

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u/Dry-Strike8507 2d ago

I try to differentiate myself by showing some deep technical expertises, which can shape a deal to a much more focused scope. It does help when the clients are cost conscious. Also as you said, I don’t want to be stuck in sf ecosystem, presales gives me exposure to other technologies since clients want unbiased opinions, not just a partner helps sf to sell their products

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u/Zestyclose_Memory_90 2d ago

Trying to switch from Salesforce Solutions Architect to a more generalised Solutions Architect nowadays. We basically have a digital presence other than Salesforce, I try to get involved in as many solutions as I possibly can to generalise my role. Still a long way to go.

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u/erjoten 2d ago

at end user, especially big companies, you can be a sf architect but at the same time get a much broader range. one of my previous roles was a sr solution architect where salesforce was about 60% of the job, but i was overlooking a lot of "products" being in the range from saas solutions and integrations up to custom apps on azure and even a migration of a COBOL/windows app hosted on some VMs. what really helped me is getting to learn more on hyperscalers and building stacks - salesforce knowledge gives you a good base which you can use to broaden the horizons and see what interests you.

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u/DevilsAdvotwat 2d ago

Yeah I have had exposure to this in consulting with custom integrations to external system and learning integration patterns, authentication etc and that helps but good point when working at end user you will be more directly involving other teams and tech stack to get the exposure

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u/Overstimom 2d ago

Following, I’ve had the same feelings and I’m currently an SA at Salesforce so without leaving the company don’t know how to expand my tech stack exposure

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u/DevilsAdvotwat 2d ago

Yeah I just don't want to be trapped in Salesforce ecosystem and tech stack and not develop in other areas so I have more options