[qzxvwt]

I was a product architect in advertising for a brief period. About half the job involved writing all sorts of technical documentation, including functional specifications for developers, internal and user-facing API docs, and user guides for websites, apps, and installations we built. I loved this part of the work because of how it was a mix of both info design (you're practically a graphic designer in this respect) and rigorous research that usually involved consulting the designers and devs for knowledge, but sometimes external specialists as well.

To be a product architect you need to:

- Express interest/expertise in learning (constantly) about existing and emerging products/systems/technologies

- Be creative (product definition is your job after all)

- Understand all the moving parts of software development (what do the BE developers do, what do the UX designers do and when, etc)

- Be business savvy

IMO the broad skill-set requirement and critical nature of the position makes it a hard job, but if you love technical writing and already know a bit about software/programming then you could easily fall in love with this line of work.