Salesforce Functional Professional Since 2007 · London, UK
Darren Ferneyhough
5x Certified Salesforce Specialist & SME
Nearly 20 years in the Salesforce ecosystem - from accidental admin to Platform Manager, Product Manager and Consultant across government, financial services, higher education, non-profit, B2B and B2C sectors.
Trailhead stats as of September 2026 - see the current numbers on my Trailblazer profile.
Profile
About
Highly experienced Salesforce professional and 5x certified specialist with a career in the ecosystem dating back to 2007, when an accidental admin role turned into a specialism. Proven track record as a hands-on Salesforce Platform Manager, Product Manager, technical lead and consultant, taking ownership of Salesforce CRM and connected digital platforms across government, financial services, higher education, non-profit, and B2B and B2C sales environments.
Expert in declarative development, scalable platform architecture, security and governance, complex Flow automation, integrations, and CI/CD pipeline management via Jira and Gearset - with recent focus extending into AI.
Impact
Key achievements
- Architected and delivered multi-org consolidation and transformation initiatives, including platform redesign, data modelling and stakeholder alignment, reducing complexity and improving long-term supportability.
- Led end-to-end delivery of Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Experience Cloud for both greenfield and complex legacy environments, including customer-facing portals and web-based platforms.
- Delivered scalable, declarative Salesforce solutions across multiple sectors, consistently prioritising declarative capability over unnecessary custom development to reduce risk and simplify maintenance.
- Retired legacy Salesforce environments and migrated business-critical data into streamlined, governed architectures with strong regulatory, audit and security controls.
- Shaped platform roadmaps and prioritised delivery backlogs across multiple contracts, balancing new delivery with BAU support, technical debt reduction, risk and governance.
Capabilities
Core skills & technical toolkit
Platform Leadership
Technical Expertise
DevOps & Delivery
Ecosystem
Tools
Career
Experience
UK Cabinet Office - Government Commercial Agency
Jan 2026 - Jul 2026Salesforce SME & Platform Manager (Contract)
London
- Retained as interim senior technical owner for the Salesforce platform, providing SME support and hands-on fixes to a team that had been relying on external support, during transition to a permanent hire.
- Reduced a significant backlog of tickets across both Jira and Halo, getting personally hands-on with critical issues and reconfigurations.
- Managed the Gearset CI/CD pipeline and deployments across a large number of environments.
- Identified multiple imminent breakages ahead of upcoming Salesforce releases and developed mitigation plans to eliminate the issues before they landed.
Google
Nov 2025 - Jan 2026Salesforce SME & Project Manager (Contract)
London
- Led delivery to extend an existing Salesforce platform from two business units to a third, working alongside the Accenture build team and balancing competing business priorities with technical feasibility.
- Transitioned the new business unit off spreadsheets and onto Salesforce, improving data management and efficiency.
- Provided expert insight on data modelling and best practice to head off potential issues before they arose.
- Managed the project through every phase - discovery, build, testing, demos and MVP launch.
FareShare
Sept 2025 - Nov 2025Salesforce Consultant (Contract)
Remote
- Took over hands-on technical ownership of the Salesforce platform from the outgoing administrator, overseeing SI-delivered development for alignment to best practice.
- Cleared a significant backlog of outstanding tickets and built complex Flows from scratch, prioritising declarative solutions to meet requirements quickly while keeping the platform maintainable.
- Handed over cleanly to a newly recruited permanent Salesforce Administrator at the end of the engagement.
Operational Risk Consortium Ltd
Feb 2025 - Aug 2025Salesforce Consultant (Contract)
London
- Conducted a full audit of the Salesforce estate and wider tech stack, delivering a comprehensive report of actionable recommendations to improve governance, security, data quality and platform value.
- Defined a CRM optimisation roadmap and shaped the prioritised delivery backlog, tailored to the organisation's needs and budget.
- Implemented initial priority items from the roadmap: Sales Cloud optimisation, Service Cloud & Case Management implementation, and Data Cloud & Marketing Cloud Next initial build and configuration.
- Engaged directly with C-level stakeholders to align platform strategy with business objectives, and trained Sales and Revenue Operations teams on the optimised processes.
eEnergy plc
Apr 2024 - Sept 2024Salesforce Consultant (Contract)
London
- Retained to spec and build a new Salesforce instance after the business divested a unit, taking its existing org and admin with it - with only 20 working days before the old org's user cut-off.
- Negotiated an additional 2 months of courtesy licences from Salesforce to allow a proper rebuild rather than a copy-paste of the existing, decade-old org and its technical debt.
- Ran deep-dive workshops across departments, presenting as-is/to-be findings and a prioritised roadmap to C-Suite, then personally led the majority of QA and supported users through UAT.
- Interviewed and recommended the permanent Salesforce Administrator, and completed a 1-month handover with zero downtime for users.
UK Cabinet Office - Government Property Agency
May 2023 - Sept 2023Senior Salesforce Administrator (Contract)
London · Security Clearance: SC
- Acted as trusted senior technical advisor on the handover of a newly delivered Salesforce platform for a managed-service client, ensuring alignment to best practice across configuration, governance and documentation.
- Delivered user training, hypercare and platform documentation to support long-term stability.
- Mentored junior administrators to enable successful internal ownership and platform continuity.
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
May 2022 - May 2023Salesforce Lead Product Owner (Contract)
London
- Served within the Case & Regulatory Risk Management Product Group alongside 3 other Lead Product Owners, reporting to the Product Group Manager & Head of Regulatory Systems.
- Personally responsible for development and management of systems and functionality across 5 Scrum teams spanning Publishing (the FCA register of regulated firms and individuals), Platform and Security.
- Accountable for timely delivery of functionality required to support new legislation, working to hard government-set deadlines for new regulatory rules and regimes.
- Delivered Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to 50,000+ external users and 2,000+ internal users flawlessly.
- Consolidated and migrated two orgs, eliminating 13M+ lines of legacy code while maintaining full data integrity, security controls and operational continuity.
- Recruited and managed a growing team of Product Owners - including hiring their own eventual replacement - after being asked to step up into the Lead role on their very first day on the contract.
Corpay
Jan 2022 - Apr 2022Salesforce Product Manager
London
- Recruited by and reporting to the SVP of Marketing for UK, EU & ANZ to streamline processes and bring enhancements and alignment across multiple Salesforce instances and teams in the region.
- Partnered with senior stakeholders to define and progress the product roadmap, and managed a team of Admins, BAs, QAs and Developers based across the UK, EU and Russia.
- Delivered Lightning Experience across international offices and aligned org structures across business units.
- In the absence of a dedicated Product Owner and Scrum Master, personally ran sprints and Scrum ceremonies for the UK team, prioritising features and stories in agreement with the business.
- Delivered train-the-trainer sessions, live webinars and rollout documentation to drive Lightning adoption internationally.
London & Country Mortgages
May 2021 - Dec 2021Salesforce Functional Lead
Bath
- Contributed to a major Salesforce implementation spanning Service Cloud, Experience Cloud and MyTrailhead in a highly regulated financial services setting, including customer-facing portal delivery.
- Collaborated within a small, close-knit team to deliver innovative functionality across a growing multi-cloud org.
Croner-i
Jun 2020 - Apr 2021Senior Salesforce Administrator
London
- Brought in as SME to lead a new Salesforce team, replacing the previous team lead and rebuilding service levels after a prolonged period of under-resourcing.
- Cleared a 12+ month backlog of tickets and projects while delivering 2 business-critical, urgent projects, well received by the business and stakeholders.
- Mentored junior administrators and supported recruitment of an in-house developer, leaving the team and the org in noticeably better shape than at arrival.
UCFB (University Campus of Football Business)
Jul 2016 - Feb 2020Salesforce Product Consultant (Contract)
London
- Brought in to overhaul an existing Salesforce implementation that had grown messy and ineffective since UCFB's 2014 migration from a competing CRM, rebuilding core processes using purely declarative tools.
- Led UCFB's shift from a marketing-focused instance to an enterprise-wide platform spanning the full customer lifecycle, expanding usage across Finance, Marketing, Support and Accommodation.
- Delivered department-specific training sessions and guides as each department came onboard to the unified system.
Broadbench Ltd
Aug 2013 - Dec 2019Salesforce Functional Consultant (Contract)
Bournemouth
- Brought in on the strength of a prior working relationship to build a Salesforce Sales Cloud infrastructure from scratch for a fast-growing life insurance brokerage.
- Delivered a highly customised back-office and front-end system underpinning all sales and business processes, since grown into the backbone of the business.
- Led requirements workshops and UAT across the initial build and subsequent feature releases.
Credentials
Certifications & badges
5x certified, 1,361 Trailhead badges and 12 Superbadges - all verifiable on my Trailblazer profile.
Salesforce Certifications
AI & DevOps Training
Superbadges
Giving back
Community & Leadership Volunteering
Project Manager & Co-Leader
UK Salesforce Consultants & Contractors Community (SFC&C)
What began as a small WhatsApp group of Salesforce contractors and consultants in 2021 has grown, under this leadership, into one of the fastest-growing Salesforce communities in the UK.
Mentor
Trailblazer Community SFC&C
Mentored fellow Trailblazers progressing their Salesforce careers and certifications.
Treasurer
OTG UK - non-profit entrepreneur training organisation
Financial leadership and governance for a UK non-profit supporting entrepreneurship training.
What people say
Recommendations
Excerpted from LinkedIn recommendations from clients, colleagues and direct reports.
“I've had the pleasure of working with Darren for the past 2 years, and he truly stands out as a cornerstone of our SFC&C community... his growth and consistent contributions have helped our community expand to over 300 top Salesforce professionals in the UK... his professional achievements and continuous development in Salesforce uniquely position him as a rare Salesforce SME and Product Owner.”
Dovydas Mockevicius
CEO & Enterprise Architect at ISCloud, Founder of SFC&C
“I've never seen anyone who can handle a complex engagement on Salesforce with such an ease like him. He made a huge increase in my productivity... Darren earns my highest recommendation not just as a thoughtful leader but as a team player and above all a great Salesforce Architect as well.”
Venkata Srikanth Chellapilla
Senior Program Delivery Manager, 28x Salesforce Certified (direct report)
“Having worked with Darren in his role as a Salesforce Lead Product Owner, he has demonstrated extensive knowledge of the platform... Darren brings a lot of positive energy to the team and drives collaborative behaviour, easily managing complex issues across multiple internal and external stakeholders, breaking down technical detail in a way non technical colleagues are able to understand.”
Nicholas Eden-Russell
Senior Associate, Product Service Manager, Financial Conduct Authority
“His Salesforce knowledge is excellent and he really motivates you to get more involved; increase the Salesforce knowledge you have and advises the pathway to get where you want to go. I'm extremely grateful for the knowledge and confidence he's helped me build as my line manager.”
Sarah Wilde
Agile Delivery Lead, Salesforce Sales & Service Cloud, Corpay (direct report)
“Darren is one of the most professional people I have had the pleasure of working with. His expert technical knowledge of salesforce and capabilities are equally matched by his generous and friendly personality... In one conversation with Darren about salesforce shortcuts I've learned more than working a week through Trailblazer modules.”
Dorota Sharma
4x Salesforce Certified Administrator
“Darren has been trailblazing a path as a very active co-leader & project manager at SFC&C - his regular blogs and communication are very informative and relevant - he is very knowledgeable about the latest Salesforce Marketing Cloud Growth capabilities on core and how business can leverage data cloud and Agentforce to scale up in practice - its truly a pleasure collaborating with him.”
Jeremy Quartey-Papafio
Program & Product Management, AI Agentic Innovation
“I had the privilege of being mentored by Darren Ferneyhough through my journey into Salesforce, and I can't speak highly enough of his expertise, leadership, and generosity... His ability to simplify complex Salesforce concepts, combined with his deep industry knowledge, makes him an outstanding mentor.”
Avinash Dahre
Reimagining the Work World with Salesforce
“Darren's knowledge and understanding of Salesforce and its capabilities has made him an invaluable member of the technical team at Croner-i. As a result of working alongside Darren my confidence and understanding of SF has grown immeasurably. He would be an asset to any company/team!”
Sophie Austin
Global Head of Revenue Operations Systems, ITRS Group (Croner-i colleague)
“Darren possesses amazing salesforce functional and technical skills but what sets him apart is his team management ability... Darren has the uncanny ability to quickly identify a technical problem and then explain it to non-tech stakeholders in a simple manner.”
Salman Khan
Salesforce DevOps Lead
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