What Does It Take to Become a Kicksaw Engineer?

If there was ever a blank canvas of a job title, it’s Engineer. Telling someone you’re an engineer will almost certainly require a few follow-ups, or maybe a quick change of subject, depending on how much time you’re willing to dedicate to the conversation. That ambiguity can be a beautiful thing, though — when your skillset unlocks the option to jump into Salesforce/tech engineering roles, you’ve entered a dynamic world of perpetual learning and growth. It’s an exciting career path, which is why we’re thrilled to walk you through what it’s like to work as an Engineer here at Kicksaw!

Working at Kicksaw is not your typical Salesforce consulting firm experience, and a key factor to this distinction is our unique approach to doing business. Our company mission is to transform consulting by putting employees and customers first, and these aren't mere words – they provide the bedrock for our company culture.

This commitment to doing business differently translates into practical benefits for our team members. Rather than relying on SOWs and binding contracts like most traditional firms, we embrace a more adaptable strategy that not only enhances the quality of our services for clients but also prioritizes the well-being of our employees. To achieve this, we offer two distinct business models: Fractional Operations and On-Demand. 

While On-Demand services are fairly straightforward, giving clients access to a “bucket” of hours per month, Fractional Operations brings a more nuanced approach to consulting projects. For a summary of what Fractional Operations entail, watch this explainer video:

When clients present strategic-level business challenges that demand agile project management methods, Fractional Operations is the best fit for them. On the other hand, if the client's requirements lean towards routine maintenance, ongoing support, or tactical project assistance, On-Demand services are the better choice. Our engineers seamlessly collaborate with clients across both models, whether they’re working on a standalone Engineering Operations (EOPS) project or joining a Sales or Marketing Operations initiative to lend some expertise. We’re all a great big team at Kicksaw, and there’s no team member who displays that more than the Engineer.

My favorite part about being an Engineer at Kicksaw is having exposure to different types of projects. I'm not limited to doing Salesforce development — I also do development in Python and Mulesoft. I learn to use new tools and technologies every day, and it's always challenging and exciting. I also enjoy having exposure to different Salesforce Clouds. Kicksaw is very supportive; everyone is eager to help one another.
— Gigi Chan, Kicksaw Principal Engineer, Salesforce 

What sets the Engineer role apart? 

The Engineers at Kicksaw are our not-so-secret secret sauce — they’re the oomph behind some of our most impressive client projects. There’s no problem too big or too small; if it’s important to the client and it’s beyond the scope of the traditional Sales/Marketing Operations team and/or requires a more complex approach, the Engineers swoop in to work their magic. 

Engineers get to work on a nice mix of EOPS projects as well as “breakout” project elements of our more traditional Sales/Marketing Operations engagements. One of the best parts about being a Kicksaw Engineer is the sheer variety of tasks, projects, and interesting problems faced over the course of a given day. And while you’ll get plenty of opportunity to go it alone and really dig into a project, you’ll also have constant access to a truly incredible team of highly skilled fellow Engineers who are dedicated to your success. There are no egos here.  

Our unique business models offer an additional advantage to our team members: the absence of incentivization helps prevent burnout. You'll have plenty of HOK time as you work toward project milestones, of course, and your days will be filled with meaningful client calls, but you are more than just another figure in our system. You bring more to the table than 40 hours of labor — you bring yourself, and we value that. You’re a valued, respected member of our team, and we’ll treat you as such. 

The EOPS team really values different skill sets and unique strategies for attacking problems. We all have very different professional backgrounds, as well as different hands-on skills. That may be hard to manage in other environments, but here at Kicksaw, it allows us to avoid gaps and pitfalls by minimizing blind spots while simultaneously giving us the opportunity to learn new things via collaboration.
— Micky Sakora, Kickaw Engineer 3

So, what does the day-to-day look like for an Engineer here at Kicksaw? Expect around three to five hours of client meetings per week and less than that for internal meetings. Other than those blocks of time, though, you set your own schedule and determine the best way to spend your time in order to finish the work that you’ve been given. A “normal” day for an Engineer (but there is no normal…you know this) might look a little something like this:

Your Morning

Depending on your particular areas of engineering expertise (Salesforce or Python, for instance), you won’t necessarily be expected to be able to tackle all of the following examples, but it’s important to underscore that our Engineers are polyglots — you need to be comfortable working in multiple languages, disciplines, and always open to learning more. 

You might spend your morning working on a few of these projects: 

• LWC, Aura and Visualforce Development: Create custom UI Elements within Salesforce Core or Experience Cloud.
• PDO Work: Create custom solutions installable as packages for our client’s customers.
• Apex Development + Audits: Create batch, async, or invocable Apex classes to support custom logic.
• Flow Deep Dives: Create complex Flows, or create LWCs and Invocable Apex Methods that can be used inside Flows to add functionality.
• Custom Integration Middleware: Connect Salesforce to EHRs, LIMs, ERPs, Custom APIs, etc. via Cloud platforms like Azure, AWS, or GCP, using cloud functions such as Python Lambdas to build scalable middleware solutions that are easy to monitor by operations and extend by developers.

11:30 - 12:00 PM

Time to take a break from your heads-down work to attend an EOPS standup meeting to discuss client work, problem-solve, and connect on issues that are important to your team, the clients, and Kicksaw. 

Lunch

You’re taking a long, exciting lunch break today. Not only are you doing a Zoom lunch with a coworker you enjoy and rarely get to work with (you met in person at the last company retreat and hit it off big time), but you’re also donating an hour of your time to the local animal shelter. Every employee receives 24 hours of paid volunteer time off per year, and we encourage you to use them to support a cause you care about!

Your Afternoon

Once you’re back in the home office, you catch up on some emails and other outstanding tasks before attending your sole client meeting for that day — this one is a training meeting to walk them through some new functionality you’ve built. 

After that meeting, you might work on one or more of the following items: 

• Staff Augmentation: Act as a client’s internal development team for projects either within the SFDC ecosystem or without. Long-term contracts with clients have resulted in custom AWS stacks for processing data, creating internal portals, and supporting back-end processes for online businesses.
• Integration via iPaaS Solutions: Use tools like Mulesoft Composer or Mulesoft Anypoint to integrate Salesforce to third-party systems.
• Custom Web Development: Create tooling delivered as a website to support customer initiatives using modern frameworks like React and Python FastAPI.

3:00 - 3:45 PM‍

Today you’ve opted to put aside your client work for the monthly Coder’s Corner meeting. This non-mandatory meeting is hosted by EOPS but open to anyone at Kicksaw who is inclined to attend. It’s a time dedicated to questions, demos, and other topics that involve code/subject matter best suited to EOPS. You have a question you want to ask the group regarding a unique client problem, and you’re also looking forward to the opportunity to connect with some of your fellow Kicksaw problem-solvers and designers. 

To round out the rest of your day, you work on a couple of these tasks: 

• Org Migration, Data Imports, or Data Transformations: Use Python scripts or tools like Amazon DataBrew to support complex data tasks such as metadata or data org migrations.
• Infrastructure as Code Assistance: Leverage tooling like Serverless framework, AWS CDK, or Terraform to build cloud infrastructure in a repeatable way.
• SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA Compliance: Using Vanta, respond to punch-list items and build infrastructure to turn automated scans from red to green.

Every day and every client is different, but that’s part of the fun in EOPS. An ability to take ownership of projects and multitask in a fast-paced environment is critical to success. So are creative problem-solving skills, stellar documentation chops, and a genuine love for technology. If all this sounds to you like the shiny red cherry on top of a beautifully layered sundae, this might be the perfect match!

What does career growth look like for an Engineer?

There are four tiers for Marketing Implementation Consultants at Kicksaw, and we like to break them down this way: 

• Tier 1: Associate — Can tie a knot, and participates when others tie complex knots.
• Tier 2: Mid/Developing — Ties complex knots, calculates rope strength, and knows a lot about knots of all sorts
• Tier 3: Senior — Creates their own knots, teaches others how to tie these new knots, and uses these new knots strategically
• Tier 4: Principal — Uses their extensive knowledge of knots to solve complicated problems that affect their Pod/department and result in positive change for Kicksaw

Employees and managers stay organized via a user-friendly performance-management platform, and performance reviews happen biannually. Anyone at Kicksaw can easily check in on their career-growth goals without contacting HR or scheduling any meetings, thanks to the internal rubric for assessing tiers within each role. Salary range data is also readily accessible.

Every position at Kicksaw follows a well-documented career progression track. While there is a track available for those eyeing managerial roles, there's also a non-management career progression that we call the "individual contributor track." Both paths carry equal importance — managerial positions are not the sole path to achieving career success at Kicksaw.

Self-improvement is very important here. We actively encourage all employees to enhance their skill sets, whether that’s by taking classes, attending conferences such as Dreamforce or other Salesforce events, or participating in other activities that strengthen your professional abilities. Kicksaw supplies educational reimbursement (subject to a cap), an annual tech stipend, access to internal resources facilitating class discovery, and more.

Basically, you can go as far as you see fit as an Engineer at Kicksaw!

To succeed as an Engineer at Kicksaw, one needs to be curious and open to learning new skills. With the diverse profile of our customers, we need to be knowledgeable in a wide range of traditional computer science areas while continuously learning new technologies such as generative AI. As a Principal Engineer, I often communicate with customers who work in non-technical roles. I've found that a common pitfall for engineers is getting bogged down in details and, consequently, missing addressing the actual business problem a customer has — my solution is to stay on track, speak in terms familiar to our customers, and communicate technical details only as those become relevant.
— George Bocharov, Kicksaw Principal Engineer, Python

How should I prepare for an interview for the Engineer role?

Our People Operations team will look at your resumé carefully, but we want to see more than a list of certifications there — we want to see experience. Certs are definitely great, and some that we love to see are AWS professional-level, JavaScript Developer I, and Platform Developer I, but time in the saddle is what really counts. Successful candidates for the Engineer role have prior experience working in a team environment using Git and similar workflow tools, as well as a good background in both front- and backend development. However, back-end work is our primary focus. So, if you’ve never done any Salesforce development work before, this role is probably not a good fit for you.

After an initial screening with HR, if we see the potential for a strong match, you will likely be given a tech assessment to complete, which gives us a sense of your skills and abilities as an Engineer. Next, you'll meet with a Technical Project Manager and probably a peer panel interview too. These discussions give us a peek at your approach to resolving customers' business challenges. Conversations with the CTO and other leadership members will also be part of the interview process. If this sounds like an intimidating number of interviews, we want you to try to view this process as an opportunity for a series of interesting conversations with like-minded individuals genuinely invested in your success. Because that’s what it is, truly. Plus, we’re funny.

Preparing for an interview for the Engineer role at Kicksaw (or any role within the company) ultimately comes down to one key principle: authenticity. Our "Be You" core value is pivotal during the interview process — we're bringing on individuals, not assets, and personalities influence how people work and collaborate with their peers. Embracing all four of our core values, which are Work Together, Be You, Own It, and Keep It Simple, is essential. 

Kicksaw owes its success to the vibrant folks on our team, which is why fostering our people-centric culture is one of our top priorities. We’ve worked hard to create a culture that prioritizes our people in obvious ways — from our remote-first work philosophy to our long and ever-growing list of employee benefits, we’re always looking to improve the Kicksaw experience. This level of investment, though, requires that we be incredibly intentional about only hiring folks who will mesh well with the culture we’ve worked so hard to create. Demonstrating alignment with our core values and potential for contributing to our distinctive culture are key qualities we seek in candidates, regardless of the role.

All that to say, submit your resumé! Applying for a new role can be daunting, of course, but rest assured that real people will thoroughly review your application. The Engineer role at Kicksaw is an amazing opportunity for individuals who relish a technical challenge, enjoy exploring alternative solutions to complex business problems, get super nerdy about code/scripts/other stuff no one else understands, and want a promising career with a truly unique consulting firm.

We look forward to hearing from you!