Solution Architect: Skill Sets, Career Paths and Must-Haves

Other daily tasks include communication with teams, customers, and project stakeholders, as well as providing technical leadership throughout the project lifecycle. Solution architecture is one of the most important processes when redesigning your IT landscape. As one of the basic building blocks of a Zero Trust architecture, your enterprise must have a series of user verification strategies at its disposal. Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company.

The starting point is generally being the only person on a very small, and sometimes insignificant project. The project may be small enough that a single person may fill every role – including the role of solution architect. Most will already have several years (5-10) of hands-on experience in software development, network administration, or information technology.

Solution architect vs. Enterprise & Software architects

Its importance is nonetheless often overlooked or even completely ignored by companies at both ends. Before we dive into the topic, let’s clarify who is a solutions architect in general. After that, they cooperate with a business analyst to help the latter properly translate stakeholders’ requirements into functional and non-functional requirements for a product. The solution architect must be able to describe the solution in a language understandable to all. For example, a travel provider like Booking.com wants to create an app to let customers book flights, hotels, and cabs from mobile devices. The Solution Architect salary fluctuates widely, influenced by factors such as geographic location, industry, years of experience, and the complexity of the projects they undertake.

Because patterns form the basic building blocks of nearly every architecture, learning patterns makes it far easier to identify where they can be helpful. Also, reading books and articles on different architecture perspectives and new development techniques can broaden your point of view and allow you to see opportunities to create your own small sections of the solution. It is this conversion part of the role – the role of the SA -that most often is underestimated in its complexity. Just as the ability of the Functional Analyst to create a requirements document is one part science and wrote procedure so is the creation of the architecture. Creating effective architectures to create a solution requires the careful balance of dozens of development concepts ranging from “Keep it Simple Stupid” to “Fail to Safe”. The responsibilities of a solutions architect involve understanding potentially complex problems and finding all the possible solutions – accurately defining the issue and the requirement.

For all the latest developments in the world of computing, turn to the experts at our blog

This exam will be suitable not only for solutions architects but also for any experts dealing with Google Cloud technologies. According to Google’s recommendation, it’s better to take this exam with at least 3 years of experience. They cooperate with all the teams involved in the development process and need to know how every product and service works in solution architecture.

The concept of a solution architecture is rather complex and includes many aspects required to create a custom software solution with a specific purpose. That’s why there are several subtypes of architecture that handle various functional and non-functional requirements and aspects. For example, they include business, information, security, system, technology, and so on.

Lead Architect

We now anticipate that you have answers to all the pertinent questions regarding – What is a solutions architect and more. We are a leading mobile app development company and can assist all-scale businesses with all app development services. A mobile app’s tech architecture strategy depends on the modern-age technologies chosen by the solutions architect. Multiple programming languages, libraries, frameworks, standards, and architectural patterns are available, and each has different tech stack requirements. Here comes the solutions architect’s responsibility to choose the best suitable one. Experienced and dedicated solutions architect clearly communicates their technological vision to their development team.

Once software engineering projects grow more complicated and entail a bigger number of processes and risks, it’s better to consider solution architecture consulting services. All software projects have to meet a number of non-functional requirements that describe the characteristics of the system. The solution architect’s role is to analyze all non-functional requirements and ensure that further product engineering will meet them. In a rapidly changing technology environment, organizations face the need to transform their processes and systems to meet emerging business requirements. This digital transformation demands specific expertise and a set of practices to align business focus with technology solutions. A solution architect’s role differs from enterprise architects and technical architects.

How to write a solution architect job description

This conversion is based largely upon the previous design patterns that the SA has been involved with in the past through reading and staying abreast of the latest techniques, or through personal experience. To become a successful solutions architect, you will need a bachelor’s or post-graduate degree in IT, computer science, software engineering, or equivalent. There are also several certificates recommended solution architects achieve before applying for the position. As one of a few IT experts and leaders whose goal it is to develop enterprise-wide infrastructure plans and projects to achieve goals, improve systems and manage solutions.

They tend to be investigative individuals, which means they’re intellectual, introspective, and inquisitive. Some of them are also enterprising, meaning they’re adventurous, ambitious, assertive, extroverted, energetic, enthusiastic, confident, and optimistic. Next, they propose a combination of building blocks that provides the best possible solution.

Who is a solution architect?

Software architects closely collaborate with development teams and control the entire development process. So, continuing the previous example, the software architect determines what exactly has to be done and how the result can be maintained. Developer.com features tutorials, news, and how-tos focused on topics relevant to software engineers, web developers, programmers, and product managers of development teams.

• They may read industry publications, attend conferences and webinars, and participate in online communities to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices.
• Share your open role with qualified solution architects using the world’s largest professional network.
• The benefit of this approach is that you don’t have to remember a mixed bag of login credentials, making it exceptionally easy and user-friendly.
• With a comprehensive IAM portfolio, Entrust offers a fully functional suite of advanced capabilities that can easily deploy over existing infrastructure.
• Additionally, Solution Architects should have experience working with distributed systems on the cloud technology platform for developing reliable and secure solutions.
• Once everything is approved, SA traces the process of development and keeps clients tabs on the progress.

The enterprise architecture tool is designed to help solutions architects manage the transformation and risk of an organization’s IT landscape. This tool leverages technology to make decisions quickly, map designs, and manage possible outcomes and risks of the chosen solution. An enterprise architect is a role that defines and governs the overall architecture of an organization, across multiple domains, systems, and solutions.

How Enterprise Architects Close the Gap between Technology and Business

The Solutions Engineer will work with some of the world’s most innovative companies to help deploy fair, safe, and reliable ML systems. These are the five types of solutions architect roles every business owner must know. So first, it role of solution architect is essential to define the business requirements and then hire dedicated solutions architect accordingly. These professionals specialize in designing and implementing security solutions to protect an organization’s data and systems.