Principal Solutions Architect - Salesforce

Job Purpose

At Emirates, we believe in connecting the world to and through our global hub in Dubai and in constantly innovating to ensure our customers Fly Better. Emirates Group IT thrives on the dynamic nature of technology. Being pioneers in aviation innovation, were always at the forefront pushing boundaries. Embark on a journey with the worlds largest international airline and become a vital part of our cutting-edge information and technology team as Principal Solutions Architect - Salesforce.

As a Principal Solutions Architect - Salesforce, you will serve as the strategic and technical lead responsible for designing, governing, and overseeing end-to-end Salesforce solutions that align with business objectives. This role bridges business requirements with scalable, high-performing Salesforce architecture - ensuring that solutions are innovative, secure, and future-ready. The Solution Architect will provide thought leadership, guide development teams, and ensure that Salesforce implementations integrate seamlessly with enterprise systems, ultimately driving operational efficiency, customer engagement, and business growth. You will design, develop and govern the solution architecture of the Group in alignment with corporate business and IT strategies, ensuring appropriate balance between functional, service quality, systems management requirements and business objectives. This necessitates engagement at the strategic enterprise level while also taking full responsibility for the solution architectures implemented by individual projects and programmes.

In this role, you will: 

• Lead the definition and governance of new corporate and portfolio IT standards, guidelines and practices by analysing and understanding potential impact of competing technologies, assessing their strategic significance, defining their strategic role and scope, roadmap, relationship to existing standards, and periodically reviewing our entire IT estate in the context of those standards.
• Scout market and track technology advancements and new business innovations, determine how they relate to our IT strategy, existing standards, platforms and patterns, and lead the work to amend existing assets or create new assets to reflect changes in the technology landscape. Showcase business value by executing Proof of Concepts by engaging relevant IT teams.
• Lead the solution architecture development for new initiatives, vendor solution acquisitions, and enhancement of existing systems, taking full responsibility for the quality of the architecture, including integration architecture by aligning to agile architecture development practices. Drive architecture decisions and be accountable for their implications in regard to solution costs, delivery schedules, application complexity, technical debt and overall solution performance.
• Provide expert advice and lead solution design reviews to projects on technical and architectural standards, guiding them on the need to raise exception requests, develop new or amended standards, and on the appropriate use of architectural standards and patterns.
• Provide architecture and technology leadership to development teams by playing the lead architect/ driver role in Teams of Teams or Agile/ Release Trains. In addition, be accountable for the overall architecture, solution discoveries, and strategic incubations by coordinating with peer architects and engineering teams
• Manage, direct, inspire and coach the work and capability of Solutions Architect and Senior Engineering resources as required, and engage in, and lead, a much wider virtual team of senior managers, technical and subject matter experts and business managers.
• Own, manage and maintain the architecture roadmap and runways of complex/large projects, technical products, environments and/or platforms. Act as a product owner and be accountable for proactively identifying, prioritizing, and overseeing the development of technical enablers, technical debts, quality improvements, and application modernization activities.
  
  

• Degree or Honours (12+3 or equivalent) Computer Science, Engineering or equivalent IT related descipline
• Minimum certifications: Admin 201, App 401
• Preferred: Admin 211, CTA, Sales and Service Cloud Consultant, Agentforce and Data Cloud Certified
• Minimum of 8 years experience in IT architecture
• Proven experience in leading large-scale Salesforce implementations, including data architecture, application architecture, security, and integration design.
• Strong knowledge of key Salesforce products including Sales, Service, Marketing, Commerce and Data Cloud
• Extensive experience with enterprise integration technologies (e.g. Kong, SnapLogic etc.) and APIs (REST, SOAP).
• Proven expertise in Salesforce development and configuration, with hands-on experience in Apex, LWC, Omni-Channel, Flow automation, and Agent tools
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills with the ability to assess complex business problems and provide well-considered technical solutions.
• Excellent communication skills, capable of explaining technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and influencing decision-making processes.
• Understanding of agile software development methodologies such as SCRUM and Scaled Agile and industry standard software modeling techniques such as ArchiMate, C4 and UML
• Familiarity with DevOps practices and CI/CD pipelines in the Salesforce ecosystem