Demand for Salesforce Developers Continues to Expand
Salesforce is the world’s leading customer relationship management (CRM) platform, empowering businesses to streamline sales, marketing, customer service, and operations. While Salesforce’s no-code tools enable many teams to customize workflows and automate tasks, companies often face more complex challenges that require expert development skills. However, finding experienced Salesforce developers can be a significant challenge due to high market demand and the specialized nature of the role.
Organizations increasingly rely on customized Salesforce applications to meet specific business needs, which fuels demand for developers skilled in Apex, JavaScript, Lightning Web Components (LWC), and integration tools. The expansion of Salesforce’s multi-cloud ecosystem—including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Commerce Cloud—and acquisitions like Slack, Tableau, and MuleSoft require developers who can integrate and optimize these platforms. AI-driven transformation, especially leveraging Salesforce Einstein GPT and Agentforce for workflow automation, is also creating new opportunities for developers who can implement complex, AI-powered solutions.
This guide will help you navigate the hiring process by outlining essential skills, describing what separates top candidates from average ones, and providing key interview questions to identify the best Salesforce developers for your project.
How to Write a Job Description for a Salesforce Developer
To attract qualified developers for your Salesforce project, you’ll first need to create a comprehensive job description. Clearly state the experience required. While finding a certified Salesforce developer might be ideal, specifying a range, such as “3-5 years of experience,” can help attract candidates with a more relevant background. However, certifications are important because they validate the candidate’s expertise and provide a benchmark for your expected skill level. Relevant Salesforce certifications include Salesforce Certified Administrator, Salesforce Certified Platform App Builder, or Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I and II.
In addition to technical requirements, provide more details about the position and your organization in the job description. Mention if you are looking for an on-site, hybrid, or remote Salesforce developer. Establishing preferred time zones for remote teams will ensure smoother collaboration and effective real-time communication. Discuss your approach to project management and the tools that your team uses. Finally, emphasize what makes your company unique, whether it’s an innovative startup culture, comprehensive onboarding processes, or opportunities for professional growth. A detailed job description will attract the best Salesforce developers and set clear expectations, enabling a more efficient hiring process.
The Most Important Salesforce Developer Interview Questions and Sample Answers
Once candidates begin responding to your job posting, the interview process can begin. The following questions serve as good starting points for discussions that can provide insight into the candidates’ technical knowledge and complementary skill sets, such as their ability to solve problems. A candidate’s GitHub and LinkedIn pages can also provide valuable information about their background and skills.
Name the available collection types in Apex, and discuss their limits and characteristics.
Apex supports three different collection types: Lists, Maps, and Sets.
Lists are ordered collections of elements that are distinguished by their indices. Lists should be used to identify an element by its index. It’s also important to note that lists can contain duplicates.
Maps are collections of key-value pairs, where each unique key maps to a single value. A key can be any primitive data type, and a value can be a primitive, sObject, collection type, or an Apex object.
Sets are unordered collections of elements that do not contain any duplicates (in contrast to lists, as noted above).
The type of developer you should hire depends on what you’re trying to accomplish and the characteristics of each collection type described above. An experienced developer may also mention that removing items from a set is more straightforward than removing an item from a list. When you remove an item from a list, the index will shift to the left.
There is no inherent limit on the number of items a collection can hold, although there is an implicit limit based on the heap size. Due to the multi-tenant nature of the environment, Salesforce maintains a table with all the limits. They occasionally revise these limits and adjust the execution capabilities. A high-quality candidate should be able to explain all of this.
Discuss the transaction control limitations in Apex.
Salesforce is a multi-tenant environment, meaning all resources are shared among its users. The platform enforces process limits to maintain system performance and availability.
All experienced Salesforce developers should be well-versed in effectively using these limits because they affect how a solution should be engineered and coded. Here are the most relevant limitations regarding transaction control.
- Static variables are not reverted during a rollback.
- The ID on an sObject inserted after setting a savepoint is not cleared after a rollback.
- Each rollback or savepoint you set counts against the governor limit for the DML statements.
- References to savepoints cannot cross trigger invocations because each trigger invocation is a new trigger context.
- If you set more than one savepoint, then roll back to a savepoint that is not the last savepoint you generated, the later savepoint variables become invalid.
What is the time limit for synchronous Apex requests? Discuss the strategies that can be used to avoid hitting the limit.
A synchronous Apex request that runs for more than five seconds is considered to be long-running. To avoid reaching this limit, it is recommended that you use any of the following strategies.
- Tune SOQL and DML operations, making sure queries are selective.
- Check if Batch Apex is a possible alternative to convert synchronous processes into asynchronous processes.
- Try to limit calls to synchronous web services.
These are standard solutions that candidates should know to look out for when reaching limits. Limits are at the core of Salesforce development, and understanding them is essential to the app development process. A skilled engineer will know that when you get errors mentioning limits, you should tweak your code to streamline or break your solution into chunks that will stay within enforced limits.
What is the main difference between global and public classes in Apex?
Global classes are visible in any application or namespace, while public classes are only visible within a specific application or namespace.
All classes using the public access modifier will be accessible only within your application or namespace.
public class MyClass {
// Methods accessible only within your application
}
Classes using the global access modifier are accessible by Apex everywhere. An example would be a class that allows an external application to invoke an Apex Web service to act on your Salesforce application.
global class MyWebService {
// Methods accessible by Apex everywhere, e.g.: the SOAP API
}
Explain how to write an Apex class that will consider the sharing rules for the current user.
Apex code runs in the system context by default, with access to all objects and fields object permissions. If you need to write a class that will consider the current user sharing rules, you need to declare it with the with sharing
keywords. This class will be executed with access to the system context, with access to all objects and fields.
public without sharing class MyNoSharingRuleClass {
// Code here will NOT enforce the current user sharing rules
}
This class will enforce the sharing rules of the current user.
public with sharing class MySharingRuleClass {
// Code here WILL enforce the current user sharing rules
}
When a class is declared without these access modifiers, the current sharing rules are used. By default, the class will not enforce sharing rules unless acquired from a calling class.
Explain what Apex Unit Tests are and discuss the deployment requirements for Apex code.
The platform uses Apex Unit Tests, which are class methods that check if a piece of code is working properly. Note that the unit test methods take no arguments, commit no data to the database, and send no emails.
Test methods must be defined in test classes annotated with @IsTest
.
An experienced candidate will know that to deploy Apex code, Salesforce requires that all of the following criteria are satisfied:
- Unit tests must cover at least 75% of your Apex code, and all of these tests must be completed successfully.
- Every trigger must have some test coverage.
- All classes and triggers must compile successfully.
Here is an example of a basic structure of a test class.
@isTest
private class MyCustomObjectTestClass {
static testMethod void runPositiveTestCases() {
// Run your positive tests here
System.debug('Positive validation test...');
}
static testMethod void runNegativeTestCases() {
// Run your negative tests here
System.debug('Negative validation test...');
}
}
How do you access archived and deleted records by using the SOQL statement?
These terms can be confusing: a deleted record is not actually deleted on the Salesforce platform. Instead, it is moved to a recycle bin. Every user has access to the recycle bin, which is conceptually similar to the recycle bin in Windows or macOS. The same goes for archiving.
Therefore, if a developer building a query wants to include the deleted and archived records in its result set, they can use the ALL ROWS
keywords in the SOQL statement. Here’s an example.
SELECT COUNT() FROM Contact WHERE AccountId = a.Id ALL ROWS
Explain how to ensure a process can update records without the risk of other processes or users simultaneously updating the same records.
SOQL supports the FOR UPDATE
keywords.
When included in the SOQL statement, the keywords guarantee that no other process or user can update the records concurrently. After the transaction handling, the records are completed, and the lock is released.
Consider the following snippet of code, and explain what, if anything, is wrong with it.
List<Opportunity> opportunityList = [SELECT Id, Name, StageName FROM Opportunity WHERE StageName = 'Qualification'];
The preceding code fetches all the opportunities in the Qualification
stage. While the code snippet is correct, we use the literal string directly, without a constant or a configuration.
This coding practice could become a source of problems because other classes may use the same approach.
For example, if we assume that we want to change the stage name from Qualification
to Pending Review
, this would take a certain amount of work to perform an impact analysis and incorporate the changes in the code.
A qualified candidate can explain that this situation could have been avoided with a constant or a configuration approach, and our query should look something like this, assuming we have created a constant.
public static final String STAGE_NAME = 'Qualification';
The final query will be:
List<Opportunity> opportunityList = [SELECT Id, Name, StageName FROM Opportunity WHERE StageName = STAGE_NAME];
Consider the following snippet of code. Why does it generate a compilation error?
global class FutureRecordProcessing
{
@future
public static void processRecords(List<MyObject__c> myObjectList)
{
// Process records
}
}
In Apex, @future
annotated methods cannot get sObjects as arguments, because the sObject might change between the time you call the method and the time it executes. In this particular scenario, a list of sObjects IDs should be used instead to perform a query for the most up-to-date records.
Here is an example of a future method properly querying the objects from a list of IDs:
global class FutureRecordProcessing
{
@future
public static void processRecords(List<ID> recordIds)
{
// Query records
List<MyObject__c> myObjects = [SELECT Name FROM MyObject__c WHERE Id IN :recordIds];
// Process records
}
}
Why Do Companies Hire Salesforce Developers?
Salesforce developers bring specialized skills that help companies extend the platform’s capabilities, from building custom applications and integrating third-party systems to implementing AI-powered features and advanced workflow automation. These experts understand how to deliver scalable, cost-effective solutions that align with business goals and optimize platform performance.
The questions covered in this article should be straightforward for experienced professionals, helping you distinguish candidates with only drag-and-drop experience from true Salesforce experts who deeply understand SOQL, Apex, and advanced application development. Top developers implement Salesforce solutions with efficiency, scalability, reliability, and a smooth customer experience in mind.
Depending on your business goals, finding candidates with solid technical skills and extensive experience for your Salesforce implementation is a cost-effective investment. For companies looking to unlock the full potential of Salesforce, hiring part- or full-time developers offers a direct path to improving productivity, driving innovation, and strengthening customer relationships across sales, marketing, and service teams.