Career Essentials to Become an IT Architect
Posted by Walid Abou-Halloun Date: Aug 15, 2018 4:31:29 PM
When it comes to information technology careers, the IT architect is the person who designs the system.
They are the master technologist, who can see the structure of things as they should be, not as they are. They provide the vision to see it, and the ability to execute the solution.
Being an IT architect is one of the most challenging and rewarding careers available to any technologist who wants to effect change. Keep reading to learn what it takes and what skills you need to learn to become an IT architect.
The First IT Architect
It was a hot day in Egypt, some 5,000 years ago. The dust was blowing and the slaves were having a hard time hoisting the giant stone blocks onto the pyramid ramp. A man stood on a shaded platform, being fanned with palm leaves as he surveyed the scene below him.
He was Imhotep, the pharaoh Djoser’s most trusted man. He was the world’s first known project manager, and enterprise IT architect. Imhotep was entrusted with constructing the Pharaoh’s burial tomb. He had to wield the most advanced technology in the world to help build some of humanity’s most impressive creations.
He was so beloved, that he became one of only two commoners ever elevated to the status of a god in the Old Kingdom. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to get to that level of title, but being an IT architect is still a pretty good job.
Even 5,000 years ago, the job was the same! Imhotep had to have all the skills that a modern enterprise IT architect must have. The technology has obviously changed, but the skill set remains the same.
Imhotep had to understand the technology stack his company worked with, and he had to design the system to effectively use that technology to produce results.
What is an IT Architect?
An architect in the IT field is a person whose task it is to design the business processes that create value for the company and its customers. They set up the system, and are the technical experts in the processes and procedures used in the environment of the company.
A typical task for an IT architect would be deciding how computer programmers should work, what kinds of equipment they need, and what types of technologies the company needs to pursue.
IT architects create plans and design systems to solve complex technical problems.
Core Skills
The IT architect position is an executive-level job. If you plan to be one, you will be expected to hit fast pitches and take responsibility for both process and outcome.
Be prepared to be judged by results. To qualify for the job, you must have at least ten years of experience in the IT industry. An IT architect isn’t afraid to take the initiative and is backed with years’ worth of knowledge.
While you’ll certainly need technical skills, often the most desirable skills in an IT architect are “soft” people skills. If you want to learn how to become an enterprise architect, you’ll need skills way beyond the technical ones you learned in college.
In a senior-leadership position, dictating how other people will be spending a major part of their careers is crucial.
The technicals anyone can look up the vision is your responsibility to provide.
Not directly, but political skills are also part of the package. You will have to manage expectations, and egos as well. People will compete for your attention and you’ll have to figure out how to manage that effectively.
Soft skills that executive-level employees are expected to have are hard to quantify. You will have to come with social skills to fit into the organisation where you work, and eventually be a leader in that social space.
An IT architect must take the corporate culture as dictated by the CEO and CTO, and mold the technical processes to meet that culture. Your technical skills are simply assumed. It’s your ability to understand and create the process that will determine your success.
As a company leader, you will also have to know how to hire and fire people. This serious responsibility is one of the most crucial decision-making skills in an organisation.
Educational Requirements
The vast majority of IT architects have at least a bachelor’s degree.
An MBA in business is also pretty common. Degrees are usually in computer science or software engineering.
Computer science and software engineering are often nearly identical degree programs. Some universities only offer one or the other as they are so similar. In many universities, the curriculum for the first year or two might be exactly the same.
- Computer science focuses on the more technical aspects of programming. CS majors learn about the abstract areas of software, such as data structures and database theory. The subject drills down to the mathematical and scientific structures that lie under the theories of the computer science field.
- Software engineering often focuses on development methodologies. As software development has progressed, certain techniques have become so typical, that a science has arisen around them.
Test-driven development (TDD) is the concept that programmers should create tests first before they actually write code. This is known as a test-first approach and it is a cornerstone of modern software development. In TDD, a failing test is created, and then the code is authored to make the test pass.
Agile methodologies are based on the Agile Manifesto, which was published in 2001 by 17 software engineers, including Jeff Sutherland, Ken Schwaber, Jim Highsmith, Alistair Cockburn, and Bob Martin. Agile has become a major buzz term in the field of software engineering.
Agile is a blanket term that generally means elevating software engineers to the position of a project manager. They rise up and rule the enterprise, and that has turned out great for the enterprise and the geeks! It rose from the ashes of top-down methodologies used since the 1950s like “waterfall”.
Agile software engineers work in small units of self-organising programmers. Developers play roles like “scrum master”, “navigator” or “driver”. There are many versions and submodalities to Agile software development.
Types of IT Architects
There is no consensus as to what exactly an IT architect does. It is an evolving role, at the very tip of the spear of enterprise evolution. However, some general classes of architect have become normalised.
A solutions architect or an application architect is an engineer who works from within an enterprise with multiple application stacks to produce a “solution”. This solution often entwines multiple business units to produce a generalised solution to a specific problem.
Oftentimes within an organisation, a solutions architect is a sort of “roving” vice president. They may move in and out of departments, pushing the agenda that solves the specific problem at hand.
An enterprise architect is a person whose work transcends a single problem and instead concentrates on the architecture of the enterprise. This role is sometimes called a systems architect.
A QA or development architect often helps create the process by which a particular application is developed. QA architects often call themselves DevOps engineers.
DevOps is an agile concept where the traditional wall between development and operations is taken down, and singularly empowered engineers wear management and technical hats. A DevOps engineer is a type of IT architect that embodies the design and operations aspects of the job, simultaneously.
How To Become an IT Architect
Securing a key role as an IT architect isn’t going to be easy. Being at senior-level position means that there is a pyramid of people vying for the job. You’ll have to become a master of your craft to get your foot in the door here.
You will have to resort to all the normal means by which technical professionals get ahead. You need to network and create a team around yourself. You will have to understand and control how others perceive you and your skillset.
Certification
Typically an IT architect will have a bachelor’s degree and one or several professional certifications. There are dozens of organisations and schools that offer specialty IT architect certifications. Choose one that is relevant to your subspecialty or focus.
The Project Management Institute offers the very popular Project Management Professional certification. The IASA offers a certified IT architect certificate.
While certification is certainly useful, it isn’t as useful as a full-blown degree. Recently, many schools have started offering masters in fields such as business transformation or IT security architecture. These types of advanced degrees will certainly help an applicant land a job.
Big tech companies also offer certifications that are useful for landing jobs that use those enterprises as technology vendors. Many large organisations are “captured” by one technology company or another, and generally, they will use that big company’s tech stack to operate.
Almost all government entities are captured this way, with Microsoft leading the pack for bureaucratic software applications. Getting certified in a particular organisation’s “stack” will show your commitment to the technology.
For instance, Microsoft offers the Architecting Microsoft Azure Solutions certificate for its platform. Amazon has a similar certification as does Google, SAP, etc. Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA) is a sub-degree offered to Red Hat Certified Engineers.
If a company already has its tech stack aligned with a particular major brand, they will want their architects to be fluent in that stack. If you want to land a job as an IT architect, figure out what technology stacks the companies you want to work for use, and get certified in those techs.
A Green Field
There might be 10,000 professionals with the job title IT architect. That means 10,000 different jobs and career paths!
The future is exciting for creative and technologically gifted people. Be in the loop for more updates and career guides!
