Associate Director

IRC’s Salesforce platform sits at the heart of how we raise funds and stay in touch with supporters. It manages a multi-million dollar fundraising operation, is used by around 500 staff, and runs as a single global, GDPR-compliant org built on a heavily customised Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP). We are now evaluating a potential move to Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, and exploring how AI, including Agentforce and integrations with models such as Anthropic’s Claude, can work responsibly inside the platform. The Associate Director will lead that next chapter. Reporting to the Senior Director, Marketing Technology, the postholder owns the platform’s strategy, roadmap and architecture, and plays a central role in how Salesforce evolves at the IRC in the future. The role brings together three things that rarely sit in one job: architect-level Salesforce judgement, leadership of a technical team, and a real understanding of how a global nonprofit raises and manages income. The postholder leads and develops the CRM team, holds contractors and delivery partners to clear standards of quality, security and supportability, and explains technical choices and trade-offs in plain language to senior leaders. This is a team leadership role that stays close to the technology. We expect the postholder to spend most of their time on strategy, architecture and leading the team, while remaining hands-on where it matters: designing solutions, reviewing the team’s work and building when the situation calls for it.

In their first year, the postholder will:

Get to know the current NPSP org in depth, including its customisations, integrations and technical debt, and the teams who depend on it.

Agree a clear platform roadmap and the governance to deliver it with stakeholders across External Relations, Finance and programme teams.

Identify where AI tools such as Agentforce can add real value, safely and in line with IRC’s data protection and AI governance requirements.

Shape the team structure, ways of working and partner model the platform needs for its next phase.

Major Responsibilities:

Platform strategy and product ownership

Act as global product and platform owner for IRC’s Salesforce ecosystem, setting its direction and making the case for investment.

Develop and maintain a prioritised CRM roadmap aligned with IRC’s fundraising, supporter engagement, finance and programme objectives, and run a fair, transparent process for managing demand.

Lead IRC’s evaluation of Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, including the business case, options appraisal and, if approved, the migration strategy and plan.

Lead the responsible evaluation and adoption of AI within the CRM ecosystem, including Agentforce and integrations with external AI models, identifying worthwhile use cases while meeting IRC’s data protection, security, ethical AI and governance requirements.

Assess AppExchange and other third-party products and recommend what IRC should adopt, keep or retire.

Architecture and technical leadership

Own the solution architecture of the platform: data model, automation, security model, integrations and managed packages, including NPSP, Account Engagement (Pardot), Outlook integration, Blackthorn and Apsona.

Set design and build standards for declarative and programmatic development (Flow, Apex, Lightning Web Components, APIs), and review the work of the team and partners against them.

Reduce technical debt in a heavily customised org, and make sure new work is simpler to support and ready for future platform changes.

Oversee integrations with donation platforms, finance systems, the data warehouse and reporting tools, so that data flows are reliable and well documented.

Stay hands-on: prototype, configure and build when that is the fastest way to unblock the team or prove an approach.

Team and partner leadership

Lead, coach and develop a team of Salesforce administrators, developers and a business analyst, including recruitment, performance management, career development and workload planning.

Build a team culture of good engineering practice, clear documentation and service to the people who use the platform.

Manage contractors, implementation partners and suppliers, holding them to account for quality, cost and delivery, and contribute to procurement, licensing and budgeting.

Governance, security and operations

Own platform governance: access management, security, audit controls, data quality, business continuity, and compliance with GDPR and other data protection requirements across countries.

Oversee incident, problem, change and release management, including readiness for Salesforce’s three annual releases and managed-package updates.

Oversee user support, testing and defect resolution delivered by the team and partners.

Make sure reports and dashboards give leaders accurate, trusted information.

Stakeholders and business context

Build strong relationships with fundraising, finance, data and programme leaders, and understand how IRC raises, processes and stewards income in different countries.

Explain technical options, risks and trade-offs in plain language so that senior, non-technical stakeholders can make good decisions.

Job Qualifications:

Education:

Minimum:

Bachelor’s degree in information technology, computer science, business systems or a related discipline or equivalent professional experience.

Preferred: Salesforce Architect-track certifications (e.g. Application Architect, System Architect), Nonprofit Cloud Consultant, Advanced Administrator, Platform App Builder or Platform Developer I/II.

Work Experience:

Minimum:

Significant experience leading an enterprise Salesforce platform in a complex, multi-country organisation, with the architectural judgement to design and govern a large, heavily customised org.

Experience acting as a product or platform owner, including developing roadmaps, governing demand and prioritising investment.

Deep knowledge of Salesforce architecture, including data models, automation, security, integration and application lifecycle management, with enough hands-on fluency in declarative and programmatic development to guide and review the work of developers.

Proven experience managing and developing a team of technical professionals, and overseeing contractors, consultants or delivery partners.

An understanding of how nonprofits or comparable organisations raise and manage income (such as individual and recurring giving, gift processing and donor data) and how a CRM supports that work.

Experience overseeing platform operations, including incident, change and release management.

Experience working with APIs, ETL processes, integration platforms and cross-system data flows.

Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, including the ability to explain technical options and risks to non-technical and senior audiences.

Experience of Agile delivery, using tools such as Git-based source control and Jira.

Strong analytical thinking, judgement, problem solving ability and customer service orientation.

Preferred:

Hands-on experience with Nonprofit Success Pack and Nonprofit Cloud, ideally including an NPSP-to-Nonprofit Cloud evaluation or migration.

Experience delivering technology for fundraising, marketing, advocacy or supporter engagement teams.

Familiarity with Salesforce Account Engagement (Pardot), Data Cloud, Agentforce or comparable marketing, data and AI platforms.

Experience working with enterprise architecture, DevOps, Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing or integration technologies.

Experience working with an international nonprofit, humanitarian or mission-led organisation.

Experience running a CRM across multiple countries and currencies, including under GDPR and other data protection regimes.

Experience contributing to supplier management, procurement, licensing, budgeting and technology business cases.

Hands-on development experience with Apex, SOQL and Lightning Web Components.