Data & AI Lead — Salesforce · Agentforce · United Kingdom

Gary
Shaw

I turn enterprise data into AI‑powered customer experiences — leading the Salesforce Data & AI strategy at Dunelm.

Get in touch LinkedIn Trailblazer
2× Agentforce Legend
2025 & 2026
13+ yrs Retail data & operations
at Dunelm
40 min → 12 s Transactional email latency
after re-architecture
L7 AI & Data Science
Apprenticeship
01 — About

I operate at the intersection of enterprise data, AI architecture and customer experience.

As Data & AI Lead at Dunelm — one of the UK's largest homewares retailers — I design and execute the data governance and automation frameworks that power our Salesforce Service and Marketing Clouds, and own the Agentforce roadmap end to end: design, prompt engineering and deployment of intelligent AI agents.

My background is over a decade of deep retail operations and data experience: building auditing and reporting pipelines in Python and SQL, deploying NLP and time-series models, and turning raw data infrastructure into decisions the business can act on. I'm as comfortable in Apex and Flow as I am in a strategy meeting.

  • Agentforce
  • Prompt engineering
  • Generative AI
  • Data governance
  • Python & SQL
  • Service Cloud
  • Marketing Cloud
  • CRM Analytics
  • Snowflake
  • NLP & time series
02 — Experience
  1. 2025 —

    Salesforce Data & AI Lead · Dunelm

    Architecting Dunelm's Salesforce Data & AI strategy across Service and Marketing Clouds. End-to-end owner of the Agentforce roadmap — currently building Dunelm's first customer-facing Agentforce agent on Enhanced Messaging. Re-engineered business-critical transactional email from a Marketing Cloud Journey Builder operation into an Apex & Flow framework, cutting processing latency from a 40-minute average to 12 seconds.

  2. 2020 — 25

    Data & Insight Manager · Dunelm

    Established and scaled the data analytics capability for Dunelm's Customer Care Centre — custom Python/SQL pipelines, the Voice of the Customer framework, time-series forecasting (ARIMA/SARIMAX), and the platform migration from Power BI to Salesforce CRM Analytics.

  3. 2017 — 20

    Senior Team Manager · Dunelm

    Led non-voice channels through a multi-brand acquisition, built the care centre's first statistical forecasting framework, and single-handedly delivered the enterprise migration from Salesforce Classic to Lightning.

  4. 2013 — 17

    Team Manager & earlier roles · Dunelm

    From Customer Service Advisor to Team Manager — the frontline years that ground everything I build in how customers and agents actually work.

03 — Selected work
W.01

Customer-facing AI agent on Enhanced Messaging

Dunelm's first customer-facing Agentforce agent — architecture, prompt engineering and deployment on the Enhanced Messaging service, automating complex, high-volume query types end to end.

Agentforce · Prompt engineering · Service Cloud

W.02

Transactional email re-architecture

Migrated a legacy Marketing Cloud Journey Builder operation into a high-performance Apex & Flow framework spanning Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud — high-volume processing latency down from a 40-minute average to 12 seconds.

Apex · Flow · Marketing Cloud · 40 min → 12 s

W.03

Abandoned messaging-session automation

When a customer disappears mid-conversation, their messaging session used to sit in the Omni-Channel queue tying up capacity. Built automation that detects abandoned sessions and removes them from the queue — so agents only ever pick up live customers.

Messaging for In-App & Web · Omni-Channel · Flow

W.04

Enterprise data purge & retention automation

Executed a massive-scale data purge in Salesforce Production and implemented automated retention policies — better system performance, strict compliance, and a data estate the business can trust.

Data governance · Compliance · Platform performance

04 — Credentials
  • Certification

    Salesforce Certified Agentforce Specialist

    Issued December 2025

  • Apprenticeship

    Level 7 AI & Data Science Specialist

    Artificial Intelligence specialism — Cambridge Spark, 2022–2024

  • Apprenticeship

    Level 4 Data Analyst — Distinction

    Decoded, 2019–2021

  • Trailhead

    Agentforce Legend — 2025 & 2026

    150+ badges · 62,325 points · superbadges in Apex for Agentforce, Advanced Flow for Agentforce, and Security & Performance — verify on Trailblazer

05 — Contact

Let's talk.

A role, a project, or just Salesforce and AI — hello@garyshaw.dev