Solution Architect: Role and Responsibilities

The stated average earnings for solutions architects in San Jose and San Francisco are $144,000 and $132,000 annually, respectively. So, here the responsibility of the solutions architect is to ensure that the software meets all the needs and requirements well. On the other hand, the software development team adheres to the Agile methodology. They create prototypes simultaneously to identify technological constraints or advance the product concept. However, a technical architect is responsible for overseeing technical engineering and implementation.

The role of solution architects is to provide technical guidance to help clients build solutions that are secure, reliable, cost-optimized, and fault-tolerant. In various ways, this person establishes relations between business problems and tech solutions and drafts every requirement needed to make that solution work. A Solution Architect is a professional who designs and manages the implementation of a specific solution or set of solutions within an organization. These solutions typically involve software or technology systems and are designed to solve specific problems or to improve specific processes within the company. The salary of a solutions architect varies a lot and depends on multiple factors. For example, in the US, an expert can get between $142K – 238K yearly, whereas in Ukraine, a professional with the same qualifications can get between $68K – 90K per year.

What a Solutions Architect Does FAQs

According to Linkedin’s research, the average salary for Solutions Architect IT professionals in the US is $ 80K – $ 172K dollars per year. Most importantly, this specific skill is beneficial when creating solutions and achieving optimum results for the organization. However, they also need to stay flexible when they encounter changes along the way.

what does a solution architect do

Depending on your organization’s existing environment, certain certifications will be more important to your organization than others. A solutions architect needs to possess a broad set of technical and soft skills. This is an upper-level, highly skilled position, so the market for these candidates will be competitive, and there won’t be an abundance of them available. However, in large enterprise organizations, a solutions architect should be a dedicated role separate from the enterprise and technical architect. For example, a solutions architect might be called upon to implement microservices for an application, adopt rigorous security measures for networks, data, and systems, or even build a cloud infrastructure.

What Is a Solutions Architect? How to Become One, Salary, Skills.

Enterprise architecture, which we covered in a dedicated article, focuses on building complex enterprise ecosystems and solves high-level strategic issues. Enterprise architecture defines the strategic directions of the business architecture, which then leads to an understanding of what technology facilities are needed to support that architecture. So, in other words, the enterprise architect defines what has to be done, while the solution architect then decides how to do it.

The solution architect must be able to describe the solution in a language understandable to all. If you want to learn more about the solutions we have already delivered, we welcome you to check our top client cases and see the level of our expertise in various industries, including yours. This specific exam will be suitable for specialists working with Microsoft Azure and possessing advanced knowledge of Azure infrastructure. As the job title implies, this specialist primarily focuses on solution-level decisions and evaluation of their impact on a client’s overarching business objectives and outcomes. An architect is one of the most significant and client-facing roles in the IT industry. Its importance is nonetheless often overlooked or even completely ignored by companies at both ends.

Enterprise Architecture Frameworks: Documenting Your Roadmap to Change

This role requires strong analytical skills, given the nature of their everyday tasks. Moreover, their analytical competence supports them in designing solutions and accomplishing business goals. Hence, a solution architect is essentially a leader who supports project management initiatives.

what does a solution architect do

In general, senior technical consultants hold lower degree levels compared to solutions architects. Senior technical consultants are 5.7% less likely to earn their Master’s Degree and 0.0% more likely to graduate with a Doctoral Degree. Most senior system administrators achieve a lower degree level compared to solutions architects. For example, they’re 12.9% less likely to graduate with a Master’s Degree, and 0.5% less likely to earn a Doctoral Degree.

Meet Functional Requirements

These tasks are usually done by a solution architect who translates technical project details into a language that management and non-technical stakeholders can understand. Usually, companies already have operating systems, an information context, and integration requirements. The solution architecture helps ensure that a new system will fit the existing enterprise environment. To perform this task, a solution architect has to understand how all parts of the business model work together including processes, operating systems, and application architectures.

  • Solution architects may work on multiple projects at the same time, which requires effective time management and prioritization skills.
  • Take our free career test to find out if solution architect is one of your top career matches.
  • It is their responsibility to focus on business goals, including hiring new people, and understand how to achieve them in the set timeframe and within the given budget.
  • ITIL is the industry-recognized set of qualifications that includes 5 levels.
  • Arm’s ISA is effectively the blueprint for processors that other companies, from Apple to Qualcomm, base their chips on.

In addition, your ability to act as a leader will be crucial for directing the overall establishing process of business objectives. No matter, whatever might be your business domain, solution architects may work in a variety what does a solution architect do of industries, including information technology, finance, healthcare, and retail, among others. There are several different certifications that can illustrate the technical expertise of an experienced solution architect.

What Is a Solutions Architect? Roles, Skills, and Responsibilities

The solution architect’s role is to analyze all non-functional requirements and ensure that further product engineering will meet them. An infrastructure architect is much like a technical architect but with a focus on a corporate on-premises server or cloud systems employed by an organization. This means that an infrastructure specialist helps grow and maintain the production side of a corporate software ecosystem, rather than software development itself. These specialists oversee the existing IT systems and networks, and explore and integrate new ones, making sure that they meet all requirements in regard to resilience, security, performance, availability, etc.

what does a solution architect do

The minimum experience needed for this test is at least 1 year working in the field. The certificate is valid for 3 years and requires recertification once it expires. An enterprise architect has a much larger scope of work compared to other architect specializations.

What Skills Are Needed to Be a Solutions Architect?

Google, Samsung, Qualcomm and Nvidia, for instance, are part of a consortium formed in 2020 to develop RISC-V-based technologies. RISC-V in recent years has gained support from some of the world’s biggest technology companies, many of which are also Arm customers. The British chip designer itself flagged several risks in its IPO prospectus, ranging from its China business to geopolitics, but one potential threat has gained traction as its listing nears. As a result, our Client has received a responsive and user-friendly web-based QMS and easily integrated it into customer’s services.