What is a UX/UI Designer?

A UX/UI Designer at Salesforce turns complex, data‑rich enterprise workflows into clear, humane experiences across products such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Tableau, MuleSoft, and Slack. You will work at platform scale—designing for admins, end users, and developers—where accessibility, trust, and performance are non‑negotiable. Your craft shapes how millions of professionals sell, support, and collaborate every day.

This role is critical because Salesforce experiences are both broad and deep: configurable platforms, permissioned data models, and AI‑assisted flows that must still feel fast, predictable, and inclusive. Your decisions influence adoption, time‑to‑value, sales productivity, agent efficiency, and customer satisfaction—metrics that directly impact the business. Expect to partner with PMs, engineers, data scientists, and researchers to deliver end‑to‑end outcomes, from discovery through launch and iteration.

You’ll contribute to and draw from the Salesforce Lightning Design System (SLDS), build patterns for Einstein AI experiences, and design for enterprise constraints like localization, security, and auditability. If you’re motivated by complex problem spaces, measurable impact, and system‑level design, this is where your craft will scale.

Getting Ready for Your Interviews

Your preparation should center on the end‑to‑end story: business outcomes, problem framing, design systems fluency, and the rigor of your decision‑making. Show how you navigate ambiguity, collaborate across functions, and validate solutions with metrics. Bring a portfolio that proves depth, not just polish.

• Role-related Knowledge (Technical/Domain Skills) – Interviewers look for mastery in enterprise UX patterns, SLDS, accessibility standards (WCAG 2.2+), information architecture, and design for data‑dense interfaces. Demonstrate you can translate CRM workflows and permissioned data into usable flows. Be ready to discuss Figma proficiency, handoff specs, and how you maintain consistency within design systems.

• Problem-Solving Ability (How you approach challenges) – We assess how you frame problems, identify constraints, and weigh trade‑offs under real platform limitations. Show your process from research insights to flows, states, and edge cases. Use metrics (e.g., time-to-task, adoption, support tickets) to prove your approach works.

• Leadership (How you influence and mobilize others) – Influence is critical in a matrixed environment. Demonstrate how you align PMs, engineers, and stakeholders, run effective critiques, and drive decisions. Outline moments you led through ambiguity, defended users with data, and unblocked teams.

• Culture Fit (How you work with teams and navigate ambiguity) – We value Trust, Customer Success, Innovation, Equality, and Sustainability. Share examples of inclusive collaboration, ethical AI considerations, accessibility advocacy, and how you embrace feedback loops and experimentation.

Interview Process Overview

Salesforce’s UX/UI interview process blends portfolio storytelling, product thinking, and collaborative problem‑solving. You can expect a rigorous yet fair sequence that emphasizes real‑world challenges and cross‑functional alignment. The pace varies by team; some loops move quickly while others coordinate multiple groups and panelists to find the best fit.

Our philosophy is to understand your craft and your impact. Expect collaborative critiques, scenario discussions that mirror enterprise constraints, and targeted deep dives into systems thinking and accessibility. The process is designed to evaluate how you will operate day‑to‑day: partnering with PM and Engineering, reasoning under constraints, and advocating for users with evidence.

You may meet a diverse panel across design, PM, and engineering leadership. Communication between rounds can take time when multiple teams are involved. Use the recruiter as your central point of contact and clarify expectations for each round.

This visual lays out the typical sequence—from recruiter connect through portfolio review, panel loops, and hiring manager conversations—so you can plan preparation and pacing. Expect some variation by product area; enterprise and platform teams sometimes add a systems or accessibility deep dive. Confirm timelines and deliverables with your recruiter if the process extends or additional panels are added.

Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

Product Thinking for Enterprise UX

Salesforce products are configurable, permissioned, and data‑dense. Interviewers test whether you can simplify complexity without losing power. You’ll need to connect user needs to business outcomes while accounting for admin vs. end‑user roles, security models, and performance.

• Be ready to go over:

  • User and admin mental models: How roles, profiles, and permissions shape flows and visibility.
  • Outcome definition and metrics: Adoption, time‑to‑value, reduction in support tickets, agent handle time.
  • AI‑assisted experiences: When to introduce automation, guardrails for transparency, and failure states.
  • Advanced concepts (less common): Multi‑object relationships, audit trails, data residency, and platform performance constraints.

• Example questions or scenarios:

  • "Redesign a workflow where sales managers need forecasting visibility while reps need quick updates. What trade‑offs do you make?"
  • "How would you measure success for a new case‑deflection experience in Service Cloud?"
  • "When is AI assistance appropriate in a complex form, and how do you maintain trust?"

Portfolio Execution and Design Craft

Expect to present 1–2 end‑to‑end case studies with measurable outcomes. Interviewers look for problem framing, exploration, iteration, and the rationale behind decisions. Visual polish matters, but decision quality and edge‑case coverage matter more.

• Be ready to go over:

  • Process depth: Research synthesis, flows, IA, states, and variant handling.
  • Systems alignment: How you leveraged or contributed to SLDS or another design system.
  • Accessibility and inclusivity: WCAG compliance, keyboard navigation, color contrast, localization.
  • Advanced concepts (less common): Data visualization literacy (Tableau), responsive data tables, bulk actions.

• Example questions or scenarios:

  • "Walk us through the riskiest assumption in this project and how you de‑risked it."
  • "Show an example where accessibility changed your design and outcome."
  • "How did you partner with engineering to ensure performance on data‑heavy screens?"

Interaction Design, Information Architecture, and Design Systems

You’ll be assessed on how you structure information and create scalable patterns. Salesforce values systematic thinking that prevents one‑off solutions and reduces maintenance costs.

• Be ready to go over:

  • IA choices: Navigation structures for complex objects, discoverability, and progressive disclosure.
  • Patterns and variants: States, error handling, empty states, bulk editing, table behaviors.
  • SLDS fluency: Applying tokens, components, and accessibility patterns consistently.
  • Advanced concepts (less common): Component APIs for low‑code builders, LWC constraints, theming.

• Example questions or scenarios:

  • "Design bulk actions for a large, filterable data table; optimize for speed and error prevention."
  • "How do you standardize inline edit interactions across objects without harming clarity?"
  • "When do you introduce a new component versus extend an existing pattern?"

Research, Validation, and Metrics

Evaluation centers on evidence: how you choose methods, synthesize insights, and validate outcomes. Your interviewers will probe how you instrument designs and iterate based on data.

• Be ready to go over:

  • Generative vs. evaluative: When to use which, and how you make research efficient.
  • Mixed methods: Triangulating qual insights with analytics, telemetry, and A/B tests.
  • Decision logs: How you capture rationale and communicate change over time.
  • Advanced concepts (less common): Research ops, experiment design in enterprise contexts.

• Example questions or scenarios:

  • "Describe a time data contradicted stakeholder beliefs. How did you navigate it?"
  • "What KPIs did you move and how did you attribute impact to design?"
  • "How do you validate IA changes without full builds?"

Collaboration, Influence, and Delivery

You will work in a highly cross‑functional environment. Interviewers assess how you align teams, run critiques, manage feedback, and ship predictable quality.

• Be ready to go over:

  • Partnering with PM and Eng: Requirements shaping, technical constraints, and sprint planning.
  • Design reviews: Structuring feedback, conflict resolution, and decision frameworks.
  • Handoff and quality: Specs, tokens, redlines, and production checks.
  • Advanced concepts (less common): Leading multi‑team initiatives, design advocacy at org scale.

• Example questions or scenarios:

  • "Tell us about a contentious decision and how you built alignment."
  • "How do you ensure parity between design specs and implemented code?"
  • "Describe your approach to critiques when time is limited."

This visualization highlights recurring focus areas across recent interviews: portfolio storytelling, design systems/SLDS, accessibility, enterprise workflows, research validation, and cross‑functional collaboration. Use it to calibrate your preparation—double down on the most prominent themes and ensure your case studies speak directly to them.

Key Responsibilities

As a UX/UI Designer at Salesforce, your day will alternate between deep product thinking and pragmatic delivery. You’ll map complex workflows, define IA, create interaction patterns, and produce high‑fidelity designs tied to business outcomes. You will also contribute to and extend SLDS to keep experiences coherent and accessible.

You’ll collaborate closely with PMs to shape requirements and success metrics, and with engineers to understand constraints, negotiate trade‑offs, and validate builds. Research collaboration is common—planning studies, reviewing findings, and translating insights into design decisions. You will influence not just screens, but how teams decide.

• Primary deliverables: End‑to‑end flows, IA maps, interactive prototypes, SLDS‑aligned component specs, accessibility annotations, and implementation‑ready specs.
• Collaboration: Partner with PM, Eng, Research, Data Science, Documentation, and Legal/Security for compliant, scalable solutions.
• Key initiatives: AI‑augmented workflows, admin configuration UX, data‑heavy surfaces (tables/dashboards), cross‑cloud integrations, localization readiness, and performance‑aware designs.
• Continuous improvement: Leverage telemetry and feedback to iterate; uphold design quality through reviews and checklists.

Role Requirements & Qualifications

You’ll need a strong foundation in enterprise design, systems thinking, and collaboration. Bring a portfolio that proves impact with metrics and shows how you operate within constraints. Experience level varies by team, but depth of thinking is universally valued.

• Must‑have technical skills

  • Figma expertise: Components, variants, auto‑layout, tokens, and spec export workflows.
  • Design systems: Applying and extending SLDS; documenting patterns; governance know‑how.
  • Interaction design & IA: Complex flows, state management, error handling, tables, filters, bulk actions.
  • Accessibility: WCAG 2.2+, keyboard and screen reader behaviors, color/contrast, focus management.
  • Prototyping: Click‑through prototypes; familiarity with user testing tools.

• Nice‑to‑have technical skills

  • Data visualization literacy (Tableau concepts), responsive dashboards.
  • Code awareness: Understanding front‑end constraints (CSS, semantic HTML, LWC behaviors) to improve handoff.
  • Experimentation: A/B test design, instrumentation, metric definition.

• Experience and background

  • Enterprise/B2B products with configurable workflows and permissioned data.
  • End‑to‑end case studies demonstrating research through delivery and measurable impact.
  • Cross‑functional leadership: Driving alignment, running critiques, mentoring.

• Soft skills that stand out

  • Structured storytelling with evidence.
  • Bias to clarify: Framing, assumptions, risks, and trade‑offs.
  • Resilience and follow‑through in complex, multi‑stakeholder environments.

This module provides current compensation ranges by level and location, including base, bonus, and equity where available. Use it as a benchmark, but anchor discussions on your experience level, location, and the specific product team’s scope.

Common Interview Questions

Expect targeted questions that probe your product thinking, systems fluency, and leadership. Organize your responses with clear structure: context, problem, options, decision, outcome, and lessons.

Domain and Product Thinking

These questions assess how you simplify complex, enterprise workflows and tie outcomes to metrics.

• How would you redesign opportunity management so reps move faster without sacrificing data quality?
• Describe a time you balanced admin configurability with end‑user simplicity. What trade‑offs did you make?
• How do permissions and roles influence your IA and interaction choices?
• When and how would you introduce AI assistance in a data‑heavy flow?
• How do you define and track success metrics for a new feature?

Design Systems and UI Craft

Interviewers will test your ability to scale patterns and uphold consistency.

• Show how you extended a design system. What governance decisions did you make?
• How do you standardize empty states, error handling, and loading across products?
• When do you create a new component versus adapt an existing one?
• Walk through your approach to accessible table design at large scale.
• How do you handle theming and token changes late in delivery?

Research, Validation, and Metrics

Be ready to show evidence‑based decision‑making.

• Tell us about an insight that changed your solution direction. How did you validate it?
• What methods do you use to test complex IA without a full build?
• How do you reconcile conflicting qualitative and quantitative signals?
• Which metrics did you move, and how did you attribute impact to your design?
• Describe how you decide when a design is ready to ship vs. needs more iteration.

Collaboration and Leadership

We look for influence without authority and effective alignment.

• Describe a contentious trade‑off with engineering. How did you resolve it?
• How do you structure a design critique to drive decisions?
• Tell us about mentoring or leveling up peers on design systems or accessibility.
• How do you manage stakeholder requests that threaten consistency?
• Share a time you pushed back using data. What happened?

Design Exercise / Whiteboard Scenario

Some loops include live problem‑solving or critique.

• Redesign a case creation form to minimize time‑to‑submit without losing critical data.
• Outline a bulk‑edit flow for a large table with validation and undo.
• Critique this dashboard for accessibility, hierarchy, and actionable insight.
• Create an IA for admin settings across multiple objects and permissions.
• Propose safeguards for an AI‑generated summary in a support console.

These questions are based on real interview experiences from candidates who interviewed at this company. You can practice answering them interactively on Dataford to better prepare for your interview.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How difficult is the interview and how long should I prepare?
Expect medium to high rigor, especially on enterprise workflows and systems thinking. Most candidates benefit from 2–4 weeks of focused prep on portfolio storytelling, SLDS fluency, and accessibility.

Q: What makes successful candidates stand out?
Clear problem framing, measurable outcomes, and strong partnership with PM/Engineering. Top candidates show how they scale patterns, navigate ambiguity, and advocate with evidence—not opinion.

Q: What should I expect from communication and timing?
Timelines vary with cross‑team coordination. Stay proactive: confirm agendas, align on expectations for each round, and follow up with concise summaries after key conversations.

Q: Is the role remote or location‑specific?
Salesforce supports a mix of hybrid and location‑specific roles depending on team needs. Confirm location expectations, time zones, and on‑site cadence with your recruiter early.

Q: Will there be a coding round for a UX/UI Designer?
Typically no, but some UI‑heavy or design‑systems roles may include interactive prototyping or a front‑end collaboration segment. Clarify scope and prepare to discuss implementation details and constraints.

Q: How should I structure my portfolio presentation?
Lead with context and metrics, then show exploration, decisions, and outcomes. Reserve time for Q&A and have backup artifacts (research plans, metrics dashboards, spec examples).

Other General Tips

• Lead with outcomes: Quantify impact (adoption, time‑to‑task, case volume reduction). Tie design choices to measurable business results.
• Design for states: Cover errors, loading, empty, bulk, and offline scenarios. Show foresight and resilience.
• Show SLDS fluency: Name tokens, components, and accessibility hooks you used. Demonstrate when and why you extended the system.
• Narrate trade‑offs: Share options considered, what you rejected, and why. This shows judgment under constraints.
• Partner early with engineering: Bring constraints into discovery. It prevents rework and speeds delivery.
• Anticipate enterprise realities: Permissions, localization, audit trails, and performance are part of the job. Address them before you’re asked.

Summary & Next Steps

Design at Salesforce is about making powerful enterprise software feel simple, inclusive, and trustworthy. As a UX/UI Designer, you will shape SLDS patterns, orchestrate complex workflows, and partner across disciplines to deliver measurable outcomes in products used by millions.

Focus your preparation on four pillars: product thinking for enterprise workflows, design systems and accessibility, evidence‑based decision‑making, and cross‑functional leadership. Bring two deep case studies with metrics, know SLDS conventions, and be ready to reason through constraints live with the panel.

You’re capable of succeeding here. Put your best work forward, tell a tight story, and demonstrate how you scale impact through systems, not one‑offs. For additional insights, compensation context, and interview debriefs, review more resources on Dataford. Step in with confidence—your preparation will carry you.