What is a Solutions Architect? (JD Included)
This article will focus on the position of Solutions Architect in the software industry.
First Question:
WHAT IS A SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT?
As a Solutions Architect, you embody a combination of technical design skills and business acumen.
This means that you will be meeting with clients to understand their business needs and then designing systems to solve these problems.
Another way to say this is that you will architect the solutions to your customer’s pain points.
Just as an architect designs buildings, but does not actually build them, you will be designing systems for your customers and the development teams will be the ones to build them.
As you might have guessed, this is a Client Facing Engineer role. If you are not sure what that means, please see our guide here.
Now let’s look at the actual responsibilities.
WHAT ARE A SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT RESPONSIBILITIES?
As an SA, your days will consist of high-level pitching, developing proof of concepts (POC), continuously learning about technology, handling implementation, and diving into the product with the client at the time of integration.
When working with your clients, you will need to be able to draw the whole technical architecture, draw out the integration, and then work with clients on the integration of these solutions.
Typical duties involve:
Communicating with customers in person and online
Analyzing the customer’s pain points to design technical solutions
Producing and delivering technical demos, informative presentations, and proof of concepts
Being the connector between the customers and the development team
Educate and collaborate with the internal sales and external sales partners
Ensuring customers' success with the product.
This level of client engagement can lead to some interesting opportunities, let’s go over them now.
WHAT OPPORTUNITIES DOES A SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT HAVE?
The SA role is a great next step if you are an engineer that is looking to get into the next salary band by developing a client facing skillset.
It is also a great way to get more involved in the technical side if you are coming from a software sales background.
It comes with unique opportunities such as:
Having a direct impact on the success of not only your business but the business of your customers as well
Leveling up your soft skills by meeting, pitching, and collaborating with clients
Developing the ability to communicate across all levels of the business including the C-Suite
Gaining client-facing experience that can lead to leadership positions such as CTO, Director, etc.
Building a lasting network of collaborators in the software industry
Influencing the overall development of the product by responding to client needs
If you have read this far you are probably interested in working as a Solutions Architect, so let’s go over the requirements for the role.
WHAT ARE THE REQUIREMENTS TO BE A SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT?
The SA is a client-facing role, but many of the essential skills will be technical due to the need to design systems.
Having said that, if you are diligent and learn the technical aspects, you can also make the move from a sales background to a Solutions Architect role.
These will vary from company to company, but can include:
BS/BA in computer science or similar major
Knowledge of web development or mobile app development lifecycle, business modelling, database concepts, and project management using Agile development methodologies
Good communication and presentation skills, with ability to organize and present technical material in a way that is easy to understand
A basic level of coding experience with: HTML/JavaScript + Tag Managers, Shell, Go, PHP, Node.js, and/or other languages for mobile app development such as Kotlin
Data analysis experience using SQL, Python, or R
Data visualization experience using Tableau, PowerBI, DataDog, Qlik Sense, etc.
Basic knowledge of AWS services (ex. S3, EC2, Lambda)
Strong business acumen or willingness to learn
Experience in a client-facing technical role or SaaS sales
Motivated by the success of your team and customers
If you are still unsure, here are some frequently asked questions that we get about the Solutions Architect Role.
FAQ
What is the difference between a Solutions Consultant and a Solutions Architect?
There are many cases in which these titles can be interchangeable, here I am going to address the times when that is not the case.
As a Solutions Consultant, you will be in charge of leveraging the existing technologies and productize the customer needs that lay outside of the current product offering.
Compared to the Solutions Architect, the need to build advanced enterprise level systems will be less.
As a Solutions Architect, you will be responsible for designing the systems that will be built by the dev teams.
Both roles will require you to be business minded, customer obsessed, and have a baseline ability to code, but as an SA you will be designing high level systems rather than individual solutions.
What is the difference between a Solutions Architect and a Solutions Engineer?
These positions can have the same description at many companies, however, at the core there is one major difference.
A Solutions Architect designs the systems, whereas a Solutions Engineer builds the systems.
Both will meet with clients and both will come up with ways to leverage the technology to solve pain points for customers, but the scope of a Solutions Architect is generally in the designing of the systems, compared to an engineer, who would be more focused on building the individual solutions.
Does a Solutions Architect need to code?
This can vary across companies, but generally yes.
Although you will not be working as a developer, you will be designing technical systems for your team to develop and deploy.
Additionally, you will need to get in the weeds to check the code, run queries, and communicate the issues effectively with your team.
Interested in working as a Solutions Architect? Message us here!