Vice President, Salesforce Architect

Vice-President Salesforce Architect

Ares is seeking a Vice-President to serve as the Salesforce Architect for Client Platforms Technology, the engineering team responsible for all client facing systems within Ares, including Sales, Marketing, Client Reporting, and Digital/Web platforms.

Reporting to the Managing Director, Head of Client / Investor Technology, the successful candidate will serve as the strategic and technical leader for the firm's Salesforce ecosystem, supporting the client relationship management needs of both the Institutional and Wealth Management businesses. This individual will be responsible for defining and executing the architectural vision, ensuring Salesforce delivers scalable, reliable, and secure solutions aligned with the firm's commercial and operational goals.

The role oversees a blended team of in-house Salesforce developers and external consulting partners, guiding technical delivery while establishing best-in-class engineering and governance practices. The Architect will also manage the firm’s relationship with Salesforce, maintaining deep knowledge of the platform’s roadmap—especially the evolving AgentForce and AI/automation capabilities—to ensure the firm is well positioned to leverage new and emerging capabilities.

This is a highly visible, hands-on leadership role requiring strong architectural acumen, collaborative partnering across business and technology teams, and deep expertise in the Salesforce ecosystem.

Reports to: Managing Director, Head of Client Platforms

Supervises: Dotted line responsibility for a globally distributed team of Salesforce developers, both full time employees as well as external consultants, embedded within the institutional and wealth client platform engineering verticals.

Primary functions and responsibilities:

• Develop and maintain the end-to-end Salesforce architecture strategy for Institutional and Wealth Management CRM use cases.

• Ensure architectural alignment with enterprise standards, security requirements, and long-term business and data strategies.

• Evaluate and guide the adoption of new Salesforce capabilities—including AgentForce, Data Cloud, AI/analytics, workflow automation, and industry clouds.

• Translate business requirements into scalable and maintainable technical designs.

• Manage, mentor, and lead a team of internal Salesforce developers, business analysts, and technical specialists.

• Oversee the work of external consultants and system integrators, ensuring quality delivery and adherence to architectural standards.

• Establish coding guidelines, development practices, DevOps pipelines, and release management processes.

• Conduct design reviews, solution validations, and technical deep dives to ensure best-in-class implementation.

• Serve as the firm's primary point of contact with Salesforce, including account teams, solution engineers, and product specialists.

• Stay abreast of Salesforce roadmap developments, licensing changes, and emerging features—particularly around AI, automation, and AgentForce.

• Partner with CRM leadership, business stakeholders, and cross-functional technology teams to define and deliver multi-year Salesforce enhancement roadmaps.

• Ensure performance, reliability, data integrity, and security across the Salesforce platform.

• Lead technical troubleshooting and root-cause analysis for complex issues.

• Develop architectural documentation, integration patterns, and data governance guidelines.

• Monitor platform usage and optimize configurations, processes, and system scalability.

Qualifications:

Required Experience & Background:

• 8+ years of hands-on Salesforce experience, including at least 3 years in an architect or lead technical role.

• Proven experience designing and implementing enterprise Salesforce solutions supporting CRM or client data workflows.

• Experience in financial services, ideally asset management, wealth management, or banking.

• Direct management experience overseeing both internal technical staff and external development partners.

• Strong understanding of Salesforce core clouds (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud), Salesforce Platform, and API/integration frameworks.

• Strong familiarity with modern Salesforce capabilities such as Data Cloud, AI/Einstein, Flow automation, and AgentForce (or comparable AI agent platforms).

• Ability to translate business needs into technical architectures and communicate complex concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

• Salesforce certifications such as System Architect, Application Architect, or Certified Technical Architect (CTA) strongly preferred.

Preferred Experience:

• Experience with marketing automation integrations (e.g., Marketing Cloud, Account Engagement).

• Knowledge of enterprise data architecture, MDM, and integration tools

• Understanding of AI agents, workflow orchestration, and large-scale automation strategies.

• Exposure to Agile/Scrum methodologies and DevOps pipelines (Git, Azure DevOps, Copado, etc.).

Education:

• Bachelor's degree required, advanced degree preferred.

• Engineering or Computer Science background preferred.