How to Become a Salesforce Developer

Written by Coursera Staff • Updated on

As a Salesforce developer, you’ll play a role in helping an organization manage its customers and gather data to facilitate more effective operations. If this sounds like a great career to you, learn more about becoming a Salesforce developer.

[Featured Image] A salesforce developer points at their laptop on a table during a meeting with a businesswoman.

Key takeaways

  • Becoming a Salesforce developer typically requires earning a bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field, learning about Salesforce, and earning Salesforce and Platform Developer certifications.

  • Salesforce developer jobs may require using application programming interfaces (APIs) to create custom business apps, customizing Salesforce applications for clients, and evaluating data with Tableau.

  • A Salesforce developer is an information technology (IT) professional who works with Salesforce software using proprietary code, low-code, and no-code tools.

Salesforce is a SaaS provider for sales, marketing, and other customer relationship management needs. Learn more about what the role of a Salesforce developer entails, how to become one, the skills you need, and more in the following article. Afterward, if you're ready to gain practical experience with Salesforce tools, consider enrolling in the Salesforce Sales Operations Professional Certificate. In as little as three months, you’ll have the opportunity to build reports, charts, and dashboards in Salesforce to communicate relevant information about sales performance to stakeholders and executives. Upon completion, you can add this shareable credential to your resume and LinkedIn profile.

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a popular provider of affordable software as a service (SaaS) customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. It handles various business needs, including sales, service, marketing, and analytics. Instead of hosting Salesforce’s CRM locally, organizations can access it via the internet, saving them time and resources. Salesforce stores all of an organization’s customer data in the cloud for security and easy access. It offers its SaaS products with several pricing plans to meet the needs of organizations of different sizes.

What is a Salesforce developer?

Salesforce developers are IT experts specializing in Salesforce tools. In this role, you work with Salesforce software to solve issues for customers through code and Salesforce’s array of low-code and no-code tools.

What does a Salesforce developer do?

Some common responsibilities of a Salesforce developer include the following:

  • Customizing a standard Salesforce application to an organization’s needs

  • Building customized marketing experiences with tools like Agentforce Marketing (formerly Marketing Cloud)

  • Evaluating data to develop new business insights with Tableau

  • Creating new customer experiences using a Progressive Web App (PWA) kit from Agentforce Commerce

  • Creating custom Slack apps

With this powerful tool and the relevant development skills, Salesforce developers can engage with virtually every part of a business.

Salesforce developer earnings and job outlook

According to Glassdoor, the median total pay for a Salesforce developer in the US is $131,000 per year [1]. This figure includes an average base salary as well as additional pay, which may represent profit-sharing, commissions, or bonuses.

The job outlook is also very strong for software developers. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) anticipates 10 percent growth in this occupation through 2035, which is much faster than other occupations in the US [2]. The BLS projects about 106,100 job openings annually, and most of these openings will arise from the need to replace people transitioning to other roles or leaving the workforce [2].

How to become a Salesforce developer

To become a Salesforce developer, you'll need to know the basics of web development and computer programming and then refine that knowledge with a focus on Salesforce. Review the main steps to becoming a Salesforce developer in more detail.

Learn more: What Is a Salesforce Administrator? And How to Become One

1. Get the proper education.

Developers, including Salesforce developers, typically start by earning a b achelor’s degree in a related field, such as computer and information technology, computer science, or software engineering. A formal college education is not a prerequisite for all organizations. Sometimes, a Salesforce developer boot camp provides sufficient concept reinforcement to help you start your career.

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2. Learn about Salesforce.

Once you gain a solid foundation in development through formal education or a boot camp, you’ll want to immerse yourself in Salesforce and learn how it works and how to apply your development skills to it. You can gain this specialized knowledge in several ways, such as participating in online Salesforce development courses and tutorials or studying Apex, Salesforce’s proprietary programming language.

A post-graduation Salesforce boot camp may also be a good option. This can help you obtain the direct experience you need and help you build a portfolio to show to prospective employers.

3. Obtain Salesforce certification.

Organizations seeking a Salesforce developer don’t always require Salesforce certifications, but earning one can help distinguish you from other candidates. Salesforce offers many guided development paths to build skills relevant to your field of interest.

So, where should you start? A great introductory certification is the Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator certification, which helps you gain basic administrative knowledge of the Salesforce ecosystem. From this point, you can continue with other certifications, such as:

  • Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator II

  • Salesforce Certified Agentforce Sales Consultant

Additional certifications that may be useful include the following:

  • B2C Commerce Developer

  • JavaScript Developer

  • Marketing Cloud Engagement Developer

  • OmniStudio Developer

  • Platform App Builder

4. Obtain Platform Developer certification.

Once you’ve gained experience building custom applications on the Lightning Platform, you’re prepared to start working on the Platform Developer certification.

Unlike other Salesforce certifications, which often focus on use cases, the Platform Developer certification emphasizes applying technical principles to specific scenarios. Salesforce divides the exam into four main topics. These topics and the percentage of the exam they each constitute are as follows [3]:

  • Developer fundamentals: 27 percent

  • Process automation and logic: 28 percent

  • User interface: 25 percent

  • Testing, debugging, and deployment: 20 percent

Is a Salesforce developer a software engineer?

While the roles are similar, a Salesforce developer is not a software engineer. For example, Salesforce developers create custom systems that streamline business processes and are typically responsible for assisting with teaching and implementing those processes. Software engineers, on the other hand, create software and systems from scratch, including troubleshooting and adjusting them as needed. Furthermore, software engineering relies on writing and testing code, while Salesforce development emphasizes low- to no-code and custom-code processes.

Required skills for a Salesforce developer

Becoming a Salesforce developer requires learning Salesforce's proprietary programming languages, creating custom objects to optimize data storage, understanding web services, and mastering certain workplace skills, such as problem-solving, collaboration, adaptability, and communication. Review some of the essential technical skills needed to prepare for a role as a Salesforce developer.

1. Apex, Java, and JavaScript

Learning Apex, Salesforce’s proprietary programming language, is essential to your role as a Salesforce developer. In addition to using Apex to develop custom applications, Java and JavaScript are popular programming languages to learn for further application development and adding interactive elements.

2. Custom objects

Custom objects are customizable databases that store company information, such as client records, accounting information, and product details. By understanding how to create custom objects, you can optimize data storage for an organization and improve the CRM by letting users easily access all client information.

3. Web services

Web services are software programs on the internet that use a specific messaging system. These don’t adhere to any specific programming language or operating system, so they are quite useful in the Salesforce ecosystem, which often connects various systems together.

4. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

CSS is a programming language you can use to style and lay out web pages. You can use it to modify content size, spacing, color, and font, and add decorative features, such as animations, to a site. This is helpful in Salesforce, as it allows you to customize layouts and formats to make them more user-friendly.

Salesforce development includes a handful of smaller, more focused roles, such as Marketing Cloud developers and Slack developers. The following list contains these roles and their US median total pay:

  • Salesforce platform developer: As a Salesforce platform developer, you’ll customize the Salesforce platform with low-code tools and various coding languages, including JavaScript and Apex. You can expect to earn a median total pay of $155,000 per year [4].

  • Commerce Cloud developer: As a Commerce Cloud developer, you’ll develop high-scale, composable commerce apps with headless APIs. You may also integrate shopping experiences with Experience Cloud. The median total pay for cloud developers is $133,000 annually [5].

  • Marketing Cloud developer: As a Marketing Cloud developer, you’ll create high-quality experiences with Salesforce's Marketing Cloud automation platform through APIs, software development kits (SDKs), and programming languages. The median total pay for this role is $111,000 annually [6].

  • Slack developer: As a Slack developer, you’ll develop, integrate, and customize workspaces and Slack applications. The median total pay for this role is $229,000 annually [7].

  • MuleSoft developer: As a MuleSoft developer, you’ll be a leader in designing, implementing, and deploying APIs and integration projects using low-code and coding tools. The median total pay for a MuleSoft developer is $143,000 [8].

  • Tableau developer: As a Tableau developer, you’ll integrate Tableau into apps via JavaScript and build workflows connecting data through SDKs and APIs. The typical Tableau developer salary is $112,000 annually [9].

*All salary information represents the median total pay from Glassdoor as of September 2026. These figures include base salary and additional pay, which may represent profit-sharing, commissions, bonuses, or other compensation.

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Article sources

1. 

Glassdoor. “Salary: Salesforce Developer in United States, https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/salesforce-developer-salary-SRCH_KO0,20.htm.” Accessed September 29, 2026.

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