Director of Customer Platform - Salesforce

Collinson is the global, privately-owned company dedicated to helping the world to travel with ease and confidence. The group offers a unique blend of industry and sector specialists who together provide market-leading airport experiences, loyalty and customer engagement, and insurance solutions for over 400 million consumers.

Collinson is the operator of Priority Pass, the world’s original and leading airport experiences programme. Travellers can access a network of 1,500+ lounges and travel experiences, including dining, retail, sleep and spa, in over 650 airports in 148 countries, helping to elevate the journey into something special. We work with the world’s leading payment networks, over 1,400 banks, 90 airlines and 20 hotel groups worldwide.

Purpose of the job

The Director of Customer Platform leads the strategic vision, architecture, implementation and continuous improvement of Collinson’s customer platform. This is primarily a Salesforce endeavour Salesforce is the core of the platform alongside a number of adjacent tools and ecosystem components, including Salesforce ecosystem and integration technologies.

The role owns the customer platform craft end-to-end and leads a team of specialists whose work spans multiple customer lenses including consumer, client, partner, foundations, data platform and AI with team members embedded across a number of squads.

This is an architecture-led leadership role. It combines strong, hands-on solution and technical architecture with the people leadership, governance and operational discipline needed to run a distributed team well. The Director sets the architectural designs and principles for the platform, raises the quality and consistency of solutioning, and ensures the platform is built and integrated to a high standard wherever it is used.

The role covers the full customer platform footprint including (but not limited to) Salesforce CRM, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Revenue Cloud, Loyalty Management and Data Cloud, together with adjacent suppliers such as LINK Mobility and other ecosystem components.

The Director ensures platform governance, regulatory compliance and the application of technology best practice including resilience, recovery and security and owns the vendor relationships. The objective is to continuously improve the platform to support business goals and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the architectural designs and principles for the customer platform: Salesforce at its core, plus adjacent tooling and ecosystem components, setting solution and technical standards that raise the quality and consistency of delivery.
• Provide senior, hands-on architectural leadership to strengthen the design, scalability and performance of implementations, including Revenue Cloud, Loyalty Management, Service Cloud and Data Cloud.
• Establish reusable patterns and reference designs so squads can solution consistently and at pace.
• Provide architectural governance for the platform, approving integration patterns, guardrails and cross-team design decisions, including integrations with tools such as LINK Mobility.

Strategic Leadership

• Define, own and execute the strategic vision and roadmap for the customer platform to align with business objectives.
• Contribute to regional and global strategic conversations about the direction, strategy and approach of platform technical excellence.
• Drive innovation and best practice in the use and deployment of Salesforce and adjacent technologies.
• Promote the strategic importance and benefits of the customer platform across the organisation to drive wider adoption and optimisation.

Team Leadership and People Management

• Lead and look after a team of specialists, including architects, developers, administrators and consultants, often with Salesforce skills, whose work spans multiple customer lenses including consumer, client, partner, foundations, data platform and AI.
• Govern a distributed group of people who sit across a number of squads, providing them a strong functional home, clear standards and consistent line leadership.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement and professional development, and promote high team morale and engagement.
• Oversee knowledge management across the platform practice and the wider engineering community to ensure a high standard of expertise and information sharing.

Operational and Delivery Management

• Manage the team operationally, including planning, prioritisation, capacity and ways of working across the squads the specialists support.
• Oversee and be responsible for the planning, execution and delivery of platform projects and programmes.
• Ensure delivery on time, within scope and within budget, using agile methodologies and tooling.
• Ensure the scalability, performance and reliability of the platform, and manage integration with other enterprise systems and third-party applications.

Working with Engineering

• Work closely with engineering to ensure platform developments align with overall technical architecture and governance frameworks.
• Collaborate with data teams to leverage analytics and data-driven insights for platform enhancement and decision-making.
• Share insights and best practice internally and with the externally facing Professional Services team to enhance service offerings.

Stakeholder Engagement and Collaboration

• Maintain robust communication with business stakeholders to align platform capability with business needs.
• Foster collaboration across departments, including business solutions, data, engineering, operations and client services, to maximise the value of platform implementations.

Security, Governance and Compliance

• Ensure platforms comply with regulatory standards and internal governance policies.
• Ensure stringent security governance across the platform footprint to protect organisational data and maintain trust.
• Implement and enforce best practice in technology resilience, recovery and security.

Performance and Optimisation

• Set, own and exceed performance targets related to the adoption and operationalisation of the customer platform.
• Use data-driven insights to optimise platform performance and drive continuous improvement.
• Monitor and track critical business and financial KPIs, ensuring benefits realisation for the platform investment is identified, tracked, realised and communicated.

Commercial and Vendor Management

• Manage the commercial aspects of the platform, including budget controls and financial planning.
• Own the vendor relationships and renewals, including Salesforce, LINK Mobility and other ecosystem partners, and oversee third-party engagements to ensure cost-effectiveness and alignment with business objectives.
• Engage in negotiations with Salesforce and other external partners to secure advantageous terms and manage ongoing supplier relationships.
• Own the recruitment of new team members and manage relationships with suppliers and vendors.

Knowledge, skills and experience required

• Deep, demonstrable Salesforce solution and technical architecture expertise, ideally Salesforce-certified at Application and/or System Architect level, with CTA an advantage, and with a track record of designing large, multi-cloud Salesforce estates.
• Experience integrating and managing adjacent tooling and ecosystem components alongside Salesforce (e.g. messaging/communications platforms such as LINK Mobility and other integration technologies).
• Minimum 10 years in large-scale enterprise software development and programme management, with a strong focus on Salesforce platforms.
• Proven track record leading Salesforce services across CRM, Marketing, Data Services, Revenue Cloud/CPQ, billing and Loyalty.
• Extensive experience delivering programmes and products powered by Salesforce, including CRM, Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Revenue Cloud and Customer Data Platform.
• Proven ability to lead and govern a distributed team whose members are embedded across multiple squads, providing consistent standards and line leadership.
• Strong leadership qualities, able to motivate, mentor and lead a diverse team, and to empower each member to contribute meaningfully.
• Strong people-management and operational skills, including planning, prioritisation, capacity management and ways of working.
• Ability to balance hands-on architectural authority with people leadership and enablement.
• Experience working closely with engineering and translating business and product needs into requirements within an agile methodology (epics and user stories).
• Excellent communication skills, able to present complex information to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong risk management skills and the ability to develop and implement mitigation strategies.
• Understanding of information security and data privacy legislation and its implementation in a multi-cloud environment.
• Commercial acumen, innovative thinking, and the ability to generate ideas and draw them out of others.
• Ability to bridge communications between technical and business-focused groups, and to build relationships across multiple groups and levels.
• Self-motivated, goal-and-outcome-oriented, with thoroughness, attention to detail and a commitment to continuous learning.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and to work independently and take initiative.

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