7 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Salesforce Developer
Hiring a Salesforce developer or contractor? These seven questions quickly separate strong engineers from risky ones — on testing, deployment, security and ownership.
A polished portfolio tells you what someone built, not how. These seven questions cut through that quickly — they reveal whether a Salesforce developer ships maintainable, secure work or technical debt you will pay for later.
The questions
- 1. How do you test your Apex, and what coverage do you target? (Look for real unit tests, not 75% padding.)
- 2. How do you deploy changes between sandboxes and production? (Change sets are fine; CI is better.)
- 3. When do you choose Flow over Apex — and vice versa? (Probes judgement, not just coding.)
- 4. How do you keep code bulk-safe and within governor limits?
- 5. How do you handle integration security and secrets?
- 6. What documentation do you hand over, and do I own the source?
- 7. Can you walk me through a project that went wrong and what you did?
What good answers sound like
Strong developers answer with specifics and trade-offs, not absolutes. They will happily admit when configuration beats code, talk about tests and deployment as a matter of course, and have a real story about something that broke. Vague, buzzword-heavy answers — or insisting everything must be custom Apex — are the warning signs.
Red flags to watch for
- No mention of tests or documentation unless you push
- Cannot explain their deployment process clearly
- Hard-codes credentials or "we will sort security later"
- Reluctant to hand over source code or admin access
At AgentExchange, tested code, clear documentation and full ownership are the default, not an upsell. If you are evaluating help for a Salesforce project, email us — we are happy to answer all seven questions before you commit to anything.