Roadmap to Become a Software Architect in 2024. As a software development graduate or junior developer, you might want to know which senior role to move on to. With senior roles like Technical Lead, Project Manager, and Software Architect, it can be difficult to choose the one that’s ideal for you.
Read: Types of Software Architecture Patterns
Given you are here, we assume that you might have already considered “Software Architect” as a career option, and chances are that you wanna know what it takes to become one.
Read: Key Benefits of Service Oriented Architecture
So, without ado, let’s understand the role and responsibilities of a software architect entail, and the tools and technologies you need to learn.
An Overview of Software Architect
A software architect is the one responsible for planning the technical requirements of the project.
In simple terms, similar to an architect that designs communities, houses, and buildings, software architects do the same for software.
Read: A Guide To DevOps and Software Architecture
A software architect has to choose high-level designs and structure technical standards. The planning might include coding languages, standards, tools, platforms, or environments to be used for the software development.
Moreover, they had to collaborate with different teams to ensure the effective implementation and execution of the processes.
The roles and responsibilities that a software architect are as follows:
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Identifying needs and requirements of the software project by communicating with clients.
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Uncovering technical tools, standards, platforms, etc. that are ideal for the project.
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Lead the development team and divide the tasks accordingly.
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Working on documentation, code review, testing, troubleshooting, managing, etc.
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Communicating with various end-users or team members to provide software solutions that met both clients’ and users’ requirements.
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Guiding developers throughout the process of implementation to ensure the developed solution matches the design and functional needs.
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Designing a high-level development process
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Responsible for reliability, scalability, refining, and maintenance of the software development process.
Roadmap to Become a Software Architect in 2024
Software Architect Roadmap 2024. The above-mentioned section helped us understand who software architects are and what they need to handle in the software development lifecycle.
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Now, it’s time to move ahead with the roadmap that will help you set the path for becoming a software architect in the future.
Understand the Basics
The first step towards being a software architect is to understand the basic concepts such as software architecture, software architect, levels of architecture, solution architecture, application architecture, and enterprise architecture.
Know Your Responsibilities
Once you are familiar with the basics, the next step is to know the responsibilities that will be involved in your role as a software architect. These responsibilities include:
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Deciding and defining the technology to be used
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Defining and enforcing standards for software development
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Requirement generation
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Documentation
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Collaboration
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Consulting and Training of Developers
Learn Important Skills
To carry the responsibilities of being a software architect, you need to learn a few important skills such as Design and Architecture, Simplifying, Decision Making, Coding, Documenting, Communication, Estimation and Evaluation, Training, Marketing, etc.
Programming Languages to Learn
To be a software architect requires knowledge of one or more programming languages. Among Java, JavaScript, Python, Scala, Kotlin, Go, Ruby, TypeScript, and .NET you can choose the one you want to learn and boost your skills in that particular language.
Design Principles and Patterns
Needless to say, working as a software architect requires the knowledge of design principles and patterns that are used to develop the software. Some of these design principles and practices that you will come across are OOP, ACID, CAP Theorem, CQRS, Test Driven Development, Eventual Consistency, SOLID, MVC, MVP, MVVM, Actors, and Domain Driven Design.
Have Access to Important Tools
To keep track of the code, software versions, and different teams of developers, as well as clients you will use a few tools like Atlassian (to track tasks or issues in the workflow), Trello (to manage projects), Slack (for messaging), and Git (for version controlling).
Know About Software Development Architectures
Software architecture is the abstraction of a software system along with the discipline of creating a system. To be a software architect you should be aware of different software development architectures like serverless, client/server, microservices, distributed systems, layered, and service-oriented.
Learn Security Practices
With continuous digitalization comes the risks of cyber threats, and to overcome them as a software architect learning security concepts like Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), Hashing Algorithms, OWASP, and Auth Strategies is crucial to make a secured and reliable software solution.
Know How to Work with Data
Data refers to useful information collected from the software with each user interaction that helps businesses in decision-making. As data is a crucial element in software, you need to know how it works.
Some of the basics you must be aware of are data warehousing (using ELT, Data Warehouses), data processing (using Hadoop, Spark, MapReduce), Structured Query Language (SQL), and NoSQL (not only SQL).
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Understand APIs and their Integrations
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) refer to the software components that act as an intermediary between two isolated applications using a set of definitions and protocols. A few major API protocols and integrations that you need to familiarize yourself with are ESB, SOAP, GRPC, REST, and Messaging Queues.
Apart from these, a software architect should also understand GraphQL (an API query language), Business Process Management (BPM), Business Process Management Notations (BPMN), and BPEL (Business Process Execution Language).
Learn Different Technologies for Different Platforms
Being a software architect who needs to decide the technologies to be used in application development, you should be aware of different tools and technologies used for web and mobile applications.
A few basic concepts you must learn are Procedural, Object-Oriented, Functional, and Scripting languages; Single-Page Applications, Server-Side Rendering (SSR), And Static-Site Generating (SSG); Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), Microfrontends, And World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Standards.
Learn Frameworks
Having to deal with planning and strategizing the tasks, tools, tech, processes, etc. for software development, a software architect must be aware of the frameworks that help in simplifying the planning for you. Some of these frameworks to learn are
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IAF (Integrated Architecture Framework): Covers business, information systems, and technology infrastructure.
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UML (Unified Modeling Language): A modeling language that provides visualizing and designing standards for a software system.
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TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework): A content framework that offers a detailed architectural model.
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BABOK (Business Analysis Global Standards of Practice): A book that provides strategies for using data for workflow improvement in a team or organization.
Understand Networks
A network is a series of interconnected nodes that help in transferring, receiving, and exchanging different types of data. It uses a variety of protocols and algorithms to determine the way a system transfers or receives data.
And to make sure that a software application your team is developing is reliable and secure for data transfer over a network, you must understand HTTP/HTTPS, Firewalls, Proxies, OSP, and TCP/IP.
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Know Different Enterprise Software
To ease the work for you and your development team, you need to know about enterprise software that is available in the market that offers services and solutions based on your unique requirements.
MS Dynamics, IBM BPM, EMC DMS, SAP ERP, Business Objects, HANA, AWS, Azure, and Salesforce are just a few enterprise software that you should learn about.
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Have Operational Knowledge
Last but not least, the most crucial part of being a software architect is to overlook the operational side of software development.
And to do so efficiently, some concepts that you need to thoroughly understand and have knowledge about include Serverless, Infrastructure as Code, Cloud Providers, Service Mesh, Linux/Unix, Containers, Cloud Design Patterns, and CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment).
Conclusion
So that was all about the Software Architect Roadmap, and we hope that you find the blog helpful. One thing to remember here is, this is only a guide to help you get started, and keep up with the continuously evolving tools and technologies, you need to keep learning.
Lastly, if you are a business owner looking to hire a software architect along with a software development team who has years of experience and expertise, then get in touch with us now to get a customized quote!