16 Tricky Salesforce Developer Interview Questions and How to Answer Them

Salesforce Developer interviews don’t just test your knowledge and technical expertise, but rather evaluate how you think. With these types of questions, there is often no single, clear-cut answer. And that’s exactly what makes them tricky.

To address multiple aspects of the Salesforce Developer interview complexity, we’ve compiled this article — serving as a real interview prep guide. We’ll cover common tricky Salesforce Developer interview questions and answers, along with best practices on how to prepare for a Salesforce developer interview and get you all covered throughout the preparation process. In this article you’ll be able to find examples and explanations across these key question types:

Scenario-based questions
Architecture and design questions
Questions about best practices and trade-offs
Order of execution and lifecycle questions

Each type comes with its own challenges, which we’ll break down in the sections that follow.

Examining tricky question examples and answers: things to consider

Now, let’s take a closer look at some of the most common question types that can trip you up during a Salesforce Developer interview, along with best practices on how to answer them.

Scenario-based questions

These Salesforce interview questions for developers test your judgment, adaptability, and whether you can propose scalable, realistic solutions. Their goal is simple: to test your problem-solving within specific constraints like user permissions or conditional logic.

Best practices for answering scenario based interview questions for Salesforce developer include:

Clarify the scenario before answering, repeat it briefly to show understanding;
Ask about specific constraints;
Offer a step-by-step solution with reasoning for each decision.

Featured Q&A

Question:

How would you ensure that only Sales Managers can approve high-value Opportunities over $100,000?

Sample response:

“I’d implement an Approval Process with entry criteria for Opportunities over $100,000, routing the first step to Sales Managers. To ensure enforcement across all channels, I’d also add Apex logic or validation rules to prevent users outside that role from manually changing the status.”

Some additional question examples are:

How would you ensure that a user can only convert a Lead if the Company field is populated?
How would you prevent a custom object record from being deleted if it’s linked to an active Opportunity?
How would you implement auto-closure of a Case only if a customer hasn’t replied in 5 days?

Architecture and design questions

Focused on how you approach scalable and maintainable system designs within Salesforce, this interview question for Salesforce developers assesses how you think long-term — factoring in multiple aspects: code maintainability, system performance, and platform constraints, to name a few.

Best practices for answering this type of technical interview questions for Salesforce developer:

Lay out multiple options and walk through trade-offs;
Tie your decision back to scale, maintainability, or team skill set;
Don’t forget to address future change management or extensibility.

Featured Q&A

Question:

You need to track multiple versions of a proposal linked to an Opportunity. How would you design this?

Sample response:

“I’d create a custom child object called Proposal with a lookup to Opportunity and include a version number or created date. This allows tracking changes over time while preserving historical data. Optionally, I’d include an ‘active’ checkbox to flag the current version, and automate this via Flow or Trigger logic.”

Additional sample questions include:

Would you choose a Flow or Apex Trigger for a complex business logic scenario?
How would you design a solution to track version history of a custom object?
What’s the best approach to prevent data duplication across two custom objects?

Questions about best practices and trade-offs

These questions don’t have a single right answer. Instead, they are all about exploring your reasoning when choosing between multiple valid solutions. Thus, in this case, you’re judged on your justification and foresight.

Best practices for answering this type of questions for Salesforce developer interview:

Say “it depends”, immediately explaining what it depends on (illustrating such factors as context, constraints, consequences, tradeoffs, and others);
Use real-world examples or analogies to illustrate your point;
Balance performance, team skill set, and platform evolution in your answer.

Featured Q&A

Question:

Would you use a roll-up summary field or a trigger to calculate total invoice amount on a custom object?

Sample response:

“If the relationship is master-detail, I’d use a roll-up summary field for its simplicity and automatic updates. However, if it’s a lookup relationship or needs conditional logic, I’d implement a trigger or use Declarative Lookup Rollup Summaries (DLRS). The trade-off is between maintainability (declarative) and flexibility (code).”

These are some other relevant questions:

Should you use Process Builder, Flow, or Trigger to update a related object?
When is it okay to use hardcoded IDs in Apex?
Would you use a custom setting or a custom metadata type for configurable logic?

Order of execution and lifecycle

These experienced Salesforce developer interview questions are aimed to check your understanding of what runs when, including triggers, workflows, validation, and save cycles. Hanence, they require memorizing and deeply understanding Salesforce’s internal processing sequence, which is often overlooked.

Best practices on how to crack a Salesforce developer interview with these types of questions:

Walk through the sequence clearly;
Highlight where the logic you’re asked about fits in the order;
Point out any risks and their mitigation.

Featured Q&A

Question:

Why might a validation rule fire even after a Flow updates a field to meet the criteria?

Sample response:

“It’s because validation rules are evaluated before flows execute during the transaction. So if a field is initially invalid and only becomes valid due to a Flow update, the validation rule still triggers. To resolve this, I’d either adjust the flow to run earlier or refactor the validation logic to account for the automation steps.”

A few more examples include:

What happens if a process updates a record that then causes a Flow to fire?
What triggers are executed when a record is updated from a Process Builder?
How does the save order change when a before-save Flow is used?

Undoubtedly, this list is not exhaustive. Check out additional potential topics for Salesforce developer technical interview questions below.

Additional Salesforce interview question topics to consider

Code-focused	Platform-focused
Apex and SOQL nuances	Data management
Asynchronous processing and queueing mechanisms	Flow vs Apex decision-making
Exception handling and logging framework	Integration and external systems
Governor limits and exception handling	Platform events and streaming API
LWC and Aura components	Security and sharing in code
Test classes and code coverage	SOQL and SOSL optimization
Trigger development and lifecycle handling

Final tips for answering tricky questions

Wrapping up, Sr Salesforce Developer interview questions can be challenging, but whether they’re hard depends on your preparation and experience.

Summing up, keep mind the following top tips:

Always pause and break down the question — interviewers appreciate structured thinking way more than rushed answers;
Speak to both logic and context, with consideration of performance, scalability, maintainability, and other essential factors;
Don’t be afraid to say “It depends” — most importantly, justify it with context and trade-offs;
Prepare with real-world scenarios with platforms like Focus on Force offering excellent practice aligned to Salesforce certification standards.

On a final note: a strong interview performance goes beyond technical knowledge. What really matters, it’s about showing how you think, solve problems, and approach complexity. Hence, the more you prepare with realistic challenges and real-life scenario imitation tasks, the more confidently you’ll handle even the toughest questions.