Senior Salesforce Architect

About the role

The Senior Salesforce Architect leads the technical vision and security architecture of our Salesforce environment. This role sits at the intersection of solution design and compliance, with accountability for every architectural decision’s authorization impact. The architect will manage a Salesforce Developer and Administrator as direct reports and must reason natively about control inheritance, boundary management, and the cost of architectural choices measured in assessment and engineering effort.

Location: Arlington, VA (onsite five days per week). U.S. citizenship and eligibility to obtain a Top Secret security clearance are required.

Key Responsibilities

• Architecture & Design
  • Lead end‑to‑end solution architecture across Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Public Sector Solutions, Experience Cloud, and connected systems within the accredited environment.
  • Design explicitly against the Government Cloud authorized and interoperable product lists; maintain an internal register of tier‑available capabilities and those requiring risk acceptance.
  • Produce and maintain architecture artifacts: logical and physical data models, system landscape diagrams, data flow diagrams (including authorization boundaries), and integration sequence diagrams.
  • Define org strategy, environment strategy, and sandbox model—including provisioning of non‑production environments and data handling policies.
  • Design for large data volumes and long federal retention horizons (indexing, skinny tables, archiving, NARA‑compliant records disposition).
• Security Architecture & Authorization
  • Own the technical content of System Security Plan (SSP) sections for the Salesforce environment; write and maintain control implementation narratives against NIST SP 800‑53 and/or NIST SP 800‑171.
  • Serve as technical lead during 3PAO assessments, agency security reviews, and annual assessments; respond to findings and author remediation plans.
  • Create and manage Plan of Action and Milestones (POA&M) items for the platform and drive them to closure on schedule.
  • Govern the authorization boundary: define and enforce review processes for new packages, integrations, connected apps, or external services, confirming counterparty FedRAMP status.
  • Design encryption architecture (Shield Platform Encryption, FIPS‑validated cryptography, key‑management strategy, BYOK or Cache‑Only Key Service as required).
  • Design identity and access architecture (federation to agency IdP, CAC/PIV authentication, phishing‑resistant MFA, session management aligned to agency policy).
  • Design audit and monitoring architecture (Event Monitoring, Setup Audit Trail retention, log forwarding to agency SIEM for continuous monitoring).

Required Qualifications

• 10+ years in enterprise software; 6+ years architecting Salesforce solutions; 3+ years in a FedRAMP‑authorized or equivalently accredited environment.
• Demonstrated experience supporting an Authority to Operate (ATO): authoring SSP control narratives, participating in 3PAO assessments, and owning POA&M remediation.
• Working fluency in NIST SP 800‑53 control families as applied to SaaS/PaaS tenants.
• Deep expertise in the Salesforce data model, sharing and security model, and platform governor limits.
• Strong hands‑on background in Apex, Lightning Web Components, SOQL/SOSL, and Flow—sufficient to review code and challenge designs credibly.
• Experience with enterprise integration patterns and at least one middleware platform.
• Understanding of Section 508 and WCAG obligations as they constrain solution design.
• Excellent written communication; ability to produce auditor‑level documentation.
• U.S. citizenship and ability to obtain and maintain Top Secret clearance.
• Required certifications: Salesforce Certified Application Architect or System Architect, or the underlying component certifications (Data Architect, Sharing & Visibility Architect, Integration Architect, Development Lifecycle & Deployment Architect).
• Strongly preferred: Salesforce Certified Technical Architect (CTA).

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior architecture work on a federal, DoD, or state agency Salesforce program with a named agency reference.
• Experience with Public Sector Solutions, Grants Management, Licensing/Permitting, or Case Management for government.
• Familiarity with Agentforce for Public Sector and constraints on AI feature adoption in accredited environments.
• Experience with CMMC Level 2 or 3 readiness, IRS 1075, StateRAMP, or CJIS compliance.