The Salesforce Development Lead is the technical authority responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the core operational platform that underpins a cannabis company's entire value chain. In an industry defined by fragmented state-by-state regulations and mandatory seed-to-sale tracking, the Salesforce platform becomes more than a CRM; it functions as the definitive system of record and compliance engine. This role architects the digital infrastructure that tracks every plant from clone to retail product, integrates disparate systems like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and state reporting portals (e.g., METRC), and automates complex regulatory workflows. The Lead translates dense legal statutes into elegant, scalable code using tools like Apex and Lightning Web Components. Success in this position directly prevents catastrophic compliance failures, such as shipping untracked inventory or selling over a patient's legal limit, which carry the risk of seven-figure fines and license revocation.
The day begins with a daily stand-up meeting, operating within a rigorous Agile framework. The team's top priority is a critical user story: automating the creation of transfer manifests. Currently, dispensary staff manually create transfer requests for inventory moving from the cultivation facility. The new system requires an Apex-driven process that, upon a record's status change, generates a compliant manifest and pushes it to the state's METRC system via a REST API callout. The discussion focuses on building resilient error handling; if the METRC API is down, the system must queue the request and notify the compliance officer immediately to prevent an unmanifested, illegal transfer.
Following the meeting, the focus shifts to a complex declarative build. The retail operations team needs to streamline the new patient intake process at their medical dispensaries. The Development Lead architects a screen Flow that guides budtenders through a step-by-step process. This Flow validates a patient's medical ID against a state database, captures their legal purchasing limits (allotment), and creates related records for their profile. The Flow's logic is critical; it must prevent a patient with an expired card from being entered and must accurately calculate their remaining allotment based on previous purchases logged in the system.
Midday involves a peer code review for a new Lightning Web Component (LWC) developed by a team member. This LWC provides cultivation managers with a unified 'Mother Plant Dashboard.' It pulls data from three different sources: the core Salesforce `Plant__c` object, a connected ERP system that tracks nutrient inventory, and a third-party sensor system monitoring grow room climate. The Lead reviews the LWC's JavaScript controller for efficiency, ensures the Apex controller is properly bulkified to handle thousands of plant records, and verifies the component's design meets the company's UI/UX standards for clarity and ease of use on a tablet in a greenhouse.
The afternoon is dedicated to a strategic integration project. The company must connect its Salesforce instance with a third-party laboratory's information management system (LIMS) to automatically retrieve Certificates of Analysis (CoAs). The Lead is responsible for implementing a secure connection using the OAuth 2.0 protocol. This involves configuring a Connected App in Salesforce, securely storing API credentials, and writing the Apex callout logic to poll the LIMS for new CoA results. When a new CoA is available, the system must parse the PDF, extract key data like cannabinoid potency and pass/fail testing results, and update the corresponding inventory package records in Salesforce. This automation eliminates hours of manual data entry and ensures that no product can be sold without a verified, passing lab test attached to its digital record.
The Salesforce Development Lead's responsibilities are organized into three mission-critical domains:
The Salesforce Development Lead directly influences key business performance metrics through the following mechanisms:
| Impact Area | Strategic Influence |
|---|---|
| Cash | Prevents catastrophic capital loss by building systems that automate compliance reporting and prevent human errors that lead to fines from state cannabis control boards. |
| Profits | Increases operational margin by automating labor-intensive tasks such as METRC data entry, inventory reconciliation, and manifest creation, freeing up staff for revenue-generating activities. |
| Assets | Protects the value of all inventory (plants, bulk oil, finished goods) by providing a perfect, auditable chain of custody, preventing diversion and loss. |
| Growth | Creates a scalable, compliant technology stack that can be rapidly configured and deployed in new states, serving as a key enabler for MSO expansion. |
| People | Reduces employee turnover by replacing error-prone manual spreadsheets with intuitive user interfaces and automated workflows, decreasing staff frustration and compliance-related stress. |
| Products | Ensures product quality and safety by programmatically linking every saleable package to its corresponding lab test results, guaranteeing no untested product reaches a consumer. |
| Legal Exposure | Builds a defensible, immutable digital audit trail of every regulated action, providing the primary source of evidence to defend against regulatory challenges and litigation. |
| Compliance | Designs and implements the very software that enforces adherence to state law, moving compliance from a manual checklist to an automated, systemic function. |
| Regulatory | Architects a flexible platform capable of adapting to frequent regulatory changes with minimal disruption, such as modifying tax calculations or updating labeling requirements via configuration. |
Reports To: This position typically reports to the Director of Technology or the Chief Information Officer, ensuring alignment with the broader enterprise technology strategy.
Similar Roles: This role is functionally similar to a Salesforce Technical Architect, Senior Salesforce Engineer, or Integration Lead. It differs in its extreme focus on regulatory compliance as a primary driver of architecture. While a traditional Salesforce Architect might prioritize sales cycle optimization, the cannabis Salesforce Lead prioritizes audit defensibility and synchronization with state systems. The role requires a unique blend of high-level architecture skills and a deep, granular understanding of cannabis-specific operational workflows and legal requirements.
Works Closely With: This position maintains critical partnerships with the Chief Compliance Officer, who defines the regulatory requirements that must be built into the system, and the Director of Operations, who manages the physical cultivation, manufacturing, and retail workflows that the software must enable and track.
Mastery of the following technologies is essential for operational success:
Success in this role is built on experience from other highly complex and regulated industries:
The role demands a specific combination of technical and strategic attributes:
These organizations and entities define the technical and regulatory boundaries of the role:
| Acronym/Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Agile | An iterative approach to project management and software development that helps teams deliver value faster. |
| API | Application Programming Interface. A set of rules allowing different software applications to communicate with each other. |
| Apex | Salesforce's proprietary, strongly-typed, object-oriented programming language used to execute complex business logic on the platform. |
| ERP | Enterprise Resource Planning. Software used by an organization to manage day-to-day business activities such as accounting, procurement, and manufacturing. |
| Flow | A Salesforce application that automates complex business processes using declarative (point-and-click) logic instead of code. |
| LWC | Lightning Web Components. A modern UI framework for building fast, efficient, and reusable components on the Salesforce platform using standard web technologies. |
| METRC | Marijuana Enforcement Tracking Reporting Compliance. A state-mandated seed-to-sale software system used for government tracking of cannabis production and sales. |
| MSO | Multi-State Operator. A cannabis company that holds licenses and operates in multiple U.S. states. |
| OAuth | Open Authorization. A standard protocol that allows applications to access resources on behalf of a user without exposing their credentials. |
| POS | Point of Sale. The system where a retail transaction is completed, used in dispensaries to process customer sales. |
| S2S | Seed-to-Sale. Refers to the process and systems for tracking the entire lifecycle of a cannabis plant and its products. |
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