| A little offtopic, but some people might find it interesting. My company doesn't have a "Software Architect" job title. Instead the closest thing is "Staff+ Engineer", which does pretty much the same things. However there are some key differences. First, these aren't "Ivory tower" architects. They still write code (although in practice not much) and stay connected to implementation details, mostly via code and design reviews. Second, architecture is every dev's responsibility, at different levels. So Staff engineers might oversee the architecture of entire systems spanning a whole org, while senior engineers oversee a single team. A mid level dev might design the "architecture" of a small service integrated in a larger system. Staff+ engineers usually report to senior leaders and aren't part of a team. They might hold office hours and break disagreements within or between teams. I'm not one myself but in a conversation a Staff eng. told me this was the first job where no one tells him what to do. Instead he spends his time proactively looking to solve business problem. This might be top down (e.g. take a business problem and try to find how to solve it) or bottom up (e.g. take some new tech or tool and figure out how it can be used to achieve some business goals). Often problems can also be solved without tech at all (e.g. aligning stakeholders). Lastly at this level engineers are expected to be leaders as well. Mentoring, sponsoring, etc. is pretty much a requirement. They should be force multipliers, making other engineers around them better. They might also scale themselves by producing content, such as tutorials, talks, training, etc. |
Not off-topic at all, this is aligned with what I see. In older or 'regulated industry' companies the role and career path of Architect still exists. But more and more I just see senior roles that are flavours of Principal/Staff/Fellow and they still have normal Engineering duties but then in early greenfield stages of projects act as Architects, just not as a full time role.