The Future of Salesforce Development in the AI Era

The Salesforce Developer role – like many other Salesforce roles – has seen its fair share of evolution over the years. From fixing bugs, implementing features to make an org run smoothly, or acting as an honorary admin or architect; the developer can no longer be placed into a box.

With both the impressive promises of advancements and generative AI, the role is likely to look even more disparate in the future. Let’s take a look at what that could mean.

The Evolution of the Salesforce Developer

The journey of Salesforce Developers has seen significant milestones, beginning with the introduction of Apex in 2006 as a proprietary programming language tailored specifically for the Salesforce platform. Apex provided developers with the capability to customize and extend Salesforce applications to meet unique business needs.

The Salesforce ecosystem continued to evolve, and developers saw the emergence of Aura and Lightning Components in 2015, introducing a modern framework for building dynamic, responsive user interfaces. This shift allowed developers to create more interactive and visually appealing applications, enhancing the user experience.

Alongside these advancements, the exploration of automation and Artificial Intelligence tools progressed, culminating in the utilization of generative AI for code writing in recent years. This integration of AI technologies has opened up new possibilities for developers to innovate and accelerate development processes within the Salesforce ecosystem, while traditional development skills remain fundamental.

The Power of AI

At this present time, we imagine talking about AI is going to elicit a few weary reactions. In the tech world, and the Salesforce ecosystem more specifically, the AI rave train has been chugging its way along the tracks for over a year, bolstered by the seemingly endless wave of new Salesforce AI features.

However, as you might have heard, as more and more cool new AI products and features emerge (coupled with the quick creation of misbegotten new job titles), it’s becoming evident that we could be in an AI bubble.

In short, this has led to uncertainty in the ecosystem. As Ben explains in the article above, this bubble is creating a tumultuous stock pattern, but it’s also showing us the effects of hype; the subsequent result of pouring money into AI without fully understanding what it means for your business.

So what does this mean for the Salesforce Developer? Well, before we progress, we think it’s important to establish a sense of realism before diving into any future possibilities for this role. Is there money to be spent on AI? Of course, totaling over $300B across the tech industry by 2026. Are companies prepared for this initiative? It doesn’t seem like it; 62% of IT leaders say their AI systems aren’t ready. 

Although the future could look very different, don’t expect any giant changes any time soon. 

That being said, how could AI impact the Salesforce Developer role?

Predictions: Agentic, Assisted, Automated

This year’s TrailblazerDX was full of interesting insights on what an AI-driven future could look like for both Salesforce Admins and Developers. The biggest updates for developers included new features or processes that would make their lives easier; AI assistants and prompt guidance to name a couple.

In one talk with OpenAI, the implications of what these kinds of tools – and the tools that could follow them – could mean for developers were explored in great detail. 

And who better to lead this kind of discussion than OpenAI? It can be argued that they started the boom of AI phenomena in the first place, and their systematic approach is undeniably innovative, but also keeps the human at the forefront by asking: “Where can AI help me?”

Agentic

Of course, nobody can fully predict the future, but they can use data to come pretty close. That’s why OpenAI predicts an agentic future: a future where AI systems are designed to autonomously pursue complex goals and workflows with limited direct human supervision.

We can see Salesforce heading in this kind of direction already with the emphasis on Human at the Helm: limiting the cases of direct human interaction with AI but designing them in safer and more intelligent ways.

This means that the skills of developers will need to change. Roman Huet, the Head of Developer Experience at OpenAI, predicts that developers will likely become “more [like] architects of products. There will be much less building and more reviewing of code.”

This being said, it will still be imperative to understand the new platforms and how they learn and operate. After all, there’s no doubt that future AI will be smarter, more personalized, and quicker, especially if recent developments are anything to go by. The developer and the AI might have an agentic relationship, but they won’t be able to exist without each other.

Skills like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) will be the key to solidifying the gap between the two, creating foundations for powerful AI to flourish.

Assisted

Connected very closely with an agentic future is an assisted future. Although Roman admitted that this kind of technology is in the early stages, he said he hoped that AI could one day be used to create entirely assistive agents.

“Think Einstein Copilot but 10x more intelligent, responsive, and in the know – the developer’s personal assistant.” Roman Huet, Head of Developer Experience, Open AI

This will play a huge part in how a developer’s responsibilities could change. Using AI as a fully-fledged assistant will come with a whole host of benefits, including improved debugging capabilities and security checks. However, like with any new technology, responsibilities and skills will need to change.

Automated

Lastly, and perhaps most obviously, AI will be the driving force in getting us closer to an automated future. We’re already beginning to see the effects of this with Einstein’s capabilities, and processes like automated testing and code review optimization will be game-changers for Salesforce Developers, allowing them to focus more on elements like product functionality and UI/UX.

UI & The Developer

One of the things that Roman Huet was keen to stress is that a key part of his/OpenAI’s predictions is that, in the future, AI and UIs will work together harmoniously in “AI native” products. This means that developers will be creating and working with products that are “built around AI technologies from the ground up.” 

We’re also likely to move further into the realm of multi-modality: the blending of different AIs to create more accurate determinations, predictions about real-world issues, and more insightful conclusions.

A higher level of tailoring will also likely come as a result of this, with benefits for both the developer and the user.

Summary

There’s no doubt that the traditional Salesforce Developer has undergone some hefty development, and this could very well be just the beginning for the role.

The most important thing to remember is that the Salesforce AI space is constantly shifting – it always has and always will. But we will need to wait for the next big breakthrough in these technologies to begin getting any closer to any of the predictions we’ve covered. However, it is still fun to dream!