Salesforce rewrites roles amid AI shift

Bengaluru: In an AI-led overhaul, Salesforce is redesigning roles across the company as it integrates AI agents into daily workflows. “Our focus has been on redesigning every job and reskilling every employee,” said Nathalie Scardino, its president and chief people officer.The changes are reshaping how work is organised within the company. “Traditional job descriptions no longer exist,” Scardino said. “Work is now outcome-based — whether it’s renewals, pipeline, or customer experience.”AI agents are increasingly handling repetitive tasks, allowing employees to move into higher-value roles. For example, support engineers whose frontline query-handling work was automated have been retrained as forward-deployed engineers — a role created within the last year. “We co-created it with the team,” Scardino said.In sales, AI agents are qualifying leads at scale, enabling teams to focus on more complex and higher-value deals. Managers, too, are being retrained to oversee hybrid teams of humans and AI systems. “AI provides objectivity, but managers bring context,” she added. “That human element remains critical.” The company said it has spent the last two years building AI and data literacy through its internal “Agent Blazer” programme, which trains employees to build and deploy AI agents. “Today, 100% of people at Salesforce are Agent Blazers,” Scardino said.Scardino and Arundhati Bhattacharya, president and CEO at Salesforce in South Asia, attended Salesforce’s annual leadership programme, Laulima, in Hawaii, where senior leaders had to independently build AI agents in sandbox environments and earn the “Agent Blazer Innovator” Level 2 certification to qualify for attendance.“You couldn’t attend the next management meeting unless you had become an innovator,” Bhattacharya said, referring to the mandate introduced by CEO Marc Benioff.AI tools are also changing onboarding and hiring priorities, particularly in India, where Salesforce employs 17,000 people. The company said it is increasingly prioritising AI fluency, including the ability to build and deploy agents responsibly. “Beyond core technical skills, we’re looking for AI fluency — understanding how to build and use agents, when to use them, and the ethical implications,” Bhattacharya said.Salesforce also plans to hire 1,000 new graduates globally as it reshapes its workforce around AI capabilities. “Candidates now ask about access to AI tools before accepting an offer,” Bhattacharya said, underscoring how AI fluency is rapidly becoming a core expectation among new hires.