Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for IT Solutions Architect

🎯 Role Definition

As an IT Solutions Architect you design, document, and lead the delivery of scalable, secure, and cost-effective technical solutions that align with business strategy and operational constraints. You will translate business requirements into architecture blueprints, evaluate and select technologies (cloud, on-premises, hybrid), and drive technical decision-making across engineering, product, security, and operations teams. This role balances hands-on technical leadership (cloud designs, integrations, IaC, CI/CD) with stakeholder engagement, vendor assessment, and governance.

A successful candidate will be fluent in modern enterprise patterns — microservices, event-driven systems, APIs, containerization, and serverless — while applying strong security, compliance, and cost-optimization practices. You will enable teams to deliver reliable products by creating reusable reference architectures, proof-of-concepts (PoCs), runbooks, and roadmaps that reduce risk and accelerate time-to-market.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Software Engineer / Tech Lead with cross-functional integration experience
Cloud Engineer / Cloud Platform Engineer (AWS/Azure/GCP)
Systems Engineer or Infrastructure Engineer with design experience

Advancement To:

Principal Solutions Architect / Lead Solutions Architect
Enterprise Architect / Chief Architect
Head of Architecture / Director of Cloud Architecture
Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in smaller organizations

Lateral Moves:

Cloud Architect
Security / Cybersecurity Architect
Data Architect / Analytics Architect
DevOps / Platform Engineering Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Lead solution design for complex, multi-tier systems by producing high-fidelity architecture artifacts (logical/data/physical diagrams, sequence diagrams, component catalogs) that map business requirements to technology choices and identify integration touchpoints.
Define and own reference architectures and reusable patterns (microservices, event-driven, API-first, serverless) to accelerate delivery across multiple product teams and ensure consistency, scalability, and maintainability.
Architect and drive cloud migration strategies (lift-and-shift, replatform, refactor) with detailed migration plans, cutover strategies, rollback procedures, and risk mitigation for AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform.
Create and validate proof-of-concepts (PoCs) and prototypes for emerging technologies (Kubernetes, service mesh, serverless, managed databases) to prove feasibility, performance, and operational readiness before full-scale adoption.
Design secure-by-default solutions incorporating identity and access management (IAM), encryption at rest/in transit, network segmentation, Zero Trust principles, and compliance controls (PCI, HIPAA, SOC2) to meet regulatory requirements.
Collaborate with product managers and business stakeholders to translate business outcomes into technical requirements, prioritized epics, and non-functional requirements (scalability, availability, latency, RTO/RPO).
Partner with engineering leads to define API contracts, integration patterns (REST, gRPC, GraphQL, event streaming), and data interchange formats, ensuring backward compatibility and versioning strategies.
Drive infrastructure-as-code (IaC) strategy and implementation using Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM templates, or Pulumi to provision reproducible, auditable, and testable environments across dev/test/prod.
Define CI/CD pipelines and release strategies with rollback plans, blue/green or canary deployment patterns, and observability hooks to ensure predictable, low-risk releases.
Conduct performance and capacity planning, tuning for critical components (databases, caches, queues) and define SLOs/SLIs/SLAs with monitoring and alerting thresholds.
Evaluate vendor solutions, third-party services, and open-source components for cost, risk, lock-in, security posture, and roadmap fit; lead procurement and due diligence where required.
Create and maintain architecture governance artifacts, standards, and review processes (architecture review boards, design reviews) to ensure adherence to enterprise strategy and reduce technical debt.
Drive cost optimization initiatives: sizing, Reserved Instances/Savings Plans, right-sizing, autoscaling policies, and architectural changes that materially reduce cloud spend while maintaining performance.
Define disaster recovery and business continuity architectures with runbooks, failover testing, and periodic validation of recovery procedures across geographic regions.
Mentor and coach engineers on architectural patterns, code/infra reviews, and best practices; upskill teams through workshops, brown-bags, and documentation.
Lead cross-functional incident post-mortems, identify systemic root causes, and drive architectural improvements to reduce recurrence and mean time to recovery (MTTR).
Define data architecture constraints (storage, retention, lineage, GDPR/CCPA considerations) and collaborate with Data Architects to ensure systems are designed for accurate, compliant data flow and analytics.
Design secure integration patterns for legacy systems and third-party APIs, including gateway, facade, transformation, and orchestration layers to minimize risk and reduce integration complexity.
Drive observability and telemetry strategy (distributed tracing, centralized logging, metrics) and design solutions to correlate service behavior with business metrics.
Translate business roadmaps into technical roadmaps and sprint-level deliverables; align resource plans and estimate effort, risk, and dependencies for large programs.
Champion automation of repeatable operational tasks (scaling, backups, patching, testing) to enable self-service platforms that increase developer productivity.
Serve as the escalation point for architecture-related decisions during design, build, and run phases, offering pragmatic trade-offs between speed, cost, and long-term maintainability.
Produce comprehensive solution documentation, including architecture decision records (ADRs), runbooks, integration diagrams, and handover materials to operations and support teams.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Maintain and update architecture documentation, standards library, and playbooks to reflect solution iterations and lessons learned.
Conduct security and compliance assessments of proposed designs and integrate remediation plans into delivery timelines.
Run vendor and technology evaluations including RFP/RFI responses and provide recommendation reports with TCO analysis.
Provide pre-sales and sales engineering support for customer-facing opportunities, including solution demos and technical proposals.
Participate in capacity and budget forecasting by providing architectural cost models and growth scenarios.
Assist in training and onboarding programs for new hires to accelerate adoption of platform tools and patterns.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Cloud Architecture: Deep experience designing solutions on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and/or Google Cloud Platform; familiarity with multi-cloud and hybrid cloud patterns.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates, Pulumi.
Containerization & Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes (EKS/AKS/GKE), Helm, service meshes (Istio/Linkerd).
CI/CD & DevOps Tooling: Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Argo CD, Tekton; pipeline design for automated testing and deployments.
API Design & Integration: RESTful APIs, GraphQL, gRPC, API gateways (Apigee, AWS API Gateway, Kong), message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ).
Networking & Security: VPC design, load balancing, VPN/Direct Connect, WAF, IAM, secrets management, encryption technologies, security controls and hardening.
Databases & Storage: Relational (Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server), NoSQL (Cassandra, DynamoDB, MongoDB), distributed caches (Redis), object storage (S3/Blob).
Observability & Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK, Datadog, New Relic, OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing.
Scripting & Automation: Python, Bash, PowerShell, or Go for automation, tool-building, and integration tasks.
Architecture Modeling & Governance: TOGAF or equivalent frameworks, UML, ArchiMate, architecture decision records (ADRs), runbook and ops documentation.
Performance & Scalability: Load testing, capacity planning, caching strategies, CQRS, eventual consistency patterns.
Compliance & Risk Management: Knowledge of GDPR, CCPA, PCI-DSS, SOC2 frameworks and how to design compliant architectures.
Cost Management: Cloud cost modeling, tagging strategies, cost governance, rightsizing, and Reserved Instances/Savings Plans optimization.
CI/CD Security & DevSecOps: SAST/DAST, secrets scanning, artifact signing, secure build pipelines.
Identity & Access Management: OAuth2/OpenID Connect, SAML, federation, role-based access control (RBAC), and attribute-based access control (ABAC).

Soft Skills

Strategic thinking: translate business strategy into actionable technical roadmaps and prioritize trade-offs.
Clear communication: explain complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders, create concise executive summaries and proposals.
Stakeholder management: influence and align cross-functional teams (product, engineering, security, operations, finance) to achieve common goals.
Leadership & mentoring: coach engineers, lead architecture reviews, promote shared ownership of platforms and standards.
Problem solving: decompose ambiguous problems, propose pragmatic solutions, and make defensible decisions under uncertainty.
Facilitation: run workshops, architecture review boards, and technical decision sessions with multiple stakeholders.
Negotiation & vendor management: evaluate vendor claims, negotiate contracts, and balance cost vs. capability.
Adaptability: learn new tools and patterns quickly and guide teams through technology transitions.
Attention to detail & documentation: produce clear ADRs, runbooks, and operational playbooks that reduce operational friction.
Time management & prioritization: manage multiple architecture streams and deliverables in fast-paced environments.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, Network Engineering, or a related technical field — or equivalent professional experience.

Preferred Education:

Master's degree in Computer Science, Enterprise Architecture, or MBA for business-technology leadership roles.
Professional certifications (strongly preferred): AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect, TOGAF, Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA).

Relevant Fields of Study:

Computer Science / Software Engineering
Information Systems / IT Management
Network Engineering / Telecommunications
Cybersecurity / Information Assurance
Business Administration (with technical focus)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5 - 12 years of progressive IT experience, with at least 3 years in an architecture or senior design role.

Preferred:

8+ years of experience designing and delivering enterprise-grade solutions including cloud migrations and integration projects.
Demonstrated track record leading cross-functional teams through complex programs, implementing IaC, CI/CD, and observability stacks.
Prior exposure to regulated industries (finance, healthcare, government) and experience embedding compliance controls into architecture designs.
Portfolio of documented architectures, ADRs, reference architectures, and delivered PoCs or production implementations.