Salesforce Classic Technical Lead

Role Summary

The Salesforce Classic Technical Lead owns the hands-on technical quality of established Salesforce Classic orgs — typically large, heavily customised codebases with significant accumulated technical debt that are maintained and enhanced under a managed-service arrangement. The role combines deep Apex/Visualforce engineering with the discipline of objective, tool-driven code-quality remediation: planning and executing severity-based remediation against the Salesforce Code Analyzer baseline, enforcing deployment quality gates, protecting platform stability (governor limits, data storage), and maintaining a defensible evidence trail suitable for client and audit scrutiny

Code remediation & quality governance

• Plan and lead severity-based remediation of legacy Apex classes, triggers, and Visualforce across large Classic orgs, prioritising objectively-defined critical issues (Sev 1/2) over cosmetic ones.

• Operate the Salesforce Code Analyzer (PMD and associated engines) as the authoritative quality baseline; classify findings strictly against the Salesforce severity definitions rather than subjective interpretation.

• Enforce a strict remediation discipline: genuine fixes only (no suppressions / @SuppressWarnings / NOPMD), no net increase in any severity, and no functional/behavioural change during remediation.

• Author and maintain custom PMD rules (XPath-based rulesets referenced via code-analyzer.yml) to codify agreed quality patterns for consistent, repeatable detection.

• Define and uphold a clear exit / completion framework (zero Sev 1/2, managed Sev 3–5 thresholds, documented acceptance of exceptions) so remediation has an objective, finite endpoint.

Engineering & delivery

• Remediate genuine production-impacting issues — missing CRUD/FLS enforcement, sharing violations, empty catch blocks, non-bulkified DML, SOQL/DML in loops, and XSS/escaping in error messages — with evidence that behaviour is preserved.

• Lead peer review and architect-level review; ensure every change is backed by pre/post static-scan logs and test results before sign-off.

• Drive test-quality standards: meaningful assertions over coverage percentage, correct use of Test.startTest()/stopTest(), @TestSetup, and elimination of unreliable / false-positive tests; maintain coverage at or above the deployment threshold.

• Own deployment readiness through CI/CD and merge-request quality gates (e.g. AutoRabit), ensuring no code is promoted without passing the agreed static-analysis gate.

Platform stability & operations

• Monitor and manage org health against governor limits — Apex code size, data and file storage, API consumption, async/batch processing — and define proactive thresholds and escalation criteria.

• Lead data-storage optimisation and archival strategy (e.g. archiving high-volume historical/closed records to an external store) in line with the client's data-retention and compliance obligations, before recommending storage procurement.

• Produce regular, accurate status and governance reporting (weekly status, monthly governance packs, KPI/RAG dashboards) suitable for client delivery and senior stakeholders.

Stakeholder & governance

• Act as the technical point of contact with client engineering and architecture stakeholders; explain tooling, severity classification, and remediation approach clearly and defensibly.

• Maintain rigorous evidence and documentation (classification logs, exit-framework records, support-case trails) appropriate to a regulated banking environment and client escalation governance.

• Coordinate with vendor support (e.g. Salesforce cases) to resolve tooling/configuration issues and to substantiate the team's quality position.

• Mentor developers on coding standards, preventive quality practices, and the remediation methodology to avoid reintroduction of debt.

• 8–12 years in IT with 5+ years hands-on Salesforce development; demonstrable experience with Salesforce Classic and legacy org maintenance.

• Strong Apex, Visualforce, SOQL/SOSL, triggers, asynchronous Apex (Batch/Queueable/Future) and Salesforce data model expertise.

• Practical experience with the Salesforce Code Analyzer / PMD — running scans, interpreting and classifying violations by severity, and ideally authoring custom XPath rules.

• Solid grasp of Salesforce security and sharing model (CRUD/FLS, with/without sharing), bulkification, and governor-limit management.

• Experience with CI/CD and deployment tooling (AutoRabit, Gearset, Copado, or similar) and source control / merge-request workflows.

• Experience operating in a managed-service / enterprise support model, including status reporting, SLAs, and client governance.

• Excellent written and verbal communication — able to produce clear governance documents and explain technical positions to non-technical and senior stakeholders

Desirable / Preferred

• Financial-services or other regulated-domain delivery experience, with awareness of data-retention and audit expectations.

• Salesforce certifications: Platform Developer I/II, and ideally an Architect-track credential (e.g. Application Architect).

• Experience with data archival approaches (external SQL / CData / DBAmp) and large-data-volume management.

• Exposure to Lightning migration planning from Classic.

• Familiarity with quality/management reporting and RAG-based delivery governance.

Key Competencies

• Objective, evidence-led decision making — anchors quality judgements to defined standards, not opinion.

• Disciplined and risk-aware — protects production stability and avoids regressions under delivery pressure.

• Clear communicator and credible client-facing technical voice.

• Ownership and follow-through — drives issues to closure and maintains a defensible audit trail.