How to Become a Strong Software Architect

Roadmap of a Software Architect

Photo by Danist Soh on Unsplash

Software Architects are senior level actors in software development team. It takes time and experience to become the one. The skills and knowledge that you need to accumulate are cross-functional. Besides having challenges first of all in technical sphere, this position also demands from architects to have a well-established social skills. Before starting to look at master plan for becoming a software architect, let us have a glance at typical types of software architects:

• Solution Architect/Software Architect — low-level architect that is usually previous or active senior software engineer. He/She is in charge of technical design and architecture of a product with link to business people. Often leads developers.
• Enterprise Architect — high-level architect that has overall “Big Picture” of a product with less information in details. This position mostly appears in very big complicated software products even sometimes just right after CTO.
• Domain Architect — this is a popular form of software architects that are seen in multiple companies. The purpose of this position is to be an architect of specific use case, tech stack. For Example: cloud architects are responsible for a given cloud supplier. Data Architects are in charge of database operations, design, coordinations. Mobile Architects are taking care of mobile version of a software product. This counting can be very long…
• Functional Architect — this type of architects are mainly in charge of business side, being less informed about technical world. Mostly this people are experienced business analysts that design and lead business logic of a software product.

We can extend this list further, since each company might have different name for a specific position. The roles and responsibilities of above given software architecture positions can vary from company to company but essence is the same. Take a look at following graph to have a better understanding in which relation different architect roles stand in respect to technical/business skills and knowledge.