One common reason for this outlook was the assumption that appropriate data would simply be made available by someone else. Build your skillset, and your career will followĪfter working in these roles for a few years, I saw that there was a greater need to focus on data, but many traditional software engineers did not seem to value data work for a variety of reasons. The work that needed to be done is what influenced the work I actually performed. One of the key takeaways here is that my formal titles and job descriptions didn't stipulate what I actually did in these roles. Working in an agile manner required that complete solutions were understood, so separating these areas of work would only add development time for a result that might be less than optimal. They could no longer design from a practical standpoint, so I took on this responsibility as a senior software engineer.Īs such, I took on the roles of both senior software engineer and architect, additionally building DevOps deployment pipelines, because there was a need to do so. The few times I received handoffs from architects, I typically deviated from what was outlined by them because the artifacts they created were either incomplete or impractical, or because requirements changed.Īs the open source movement gained momentum, libraries and frameworks started to heavily influence software architecture, and hands-on development was needed in order to fully understand these.īut because the traditional architects I periodically worked with were no longer hands-on, there was a disconnect.

After a few years, I grew into senior software engineer roles.Īt the time, I ran across very few individuals with the title 'architect,' and the work of those with it was typically constrained to putting together artifacts describing the software to be built by engineers.īefore the agile movement took off, this initial architecture step needed to be completed prior to any subsequent development.

I began my technology career as a software engineer, which is now often called software developer. Your title might not reflect what you actually do While it is challenging to make broad statements about the path to becoming an architect, I have worked as a software, data, enterprise, principal, and chief architect and will share the general process that led me to each role. Research: Pillars of resilient digital transformationįor this reason, architect job descriptions should be explicit about what is expected, and those involved in writing these should be close to the duties of these roles to help ensure accuracy.

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