After reading a ton of blind posts I'm still wondering which companies hire for higher level architect positions. Also wondering, what do they really do on a weekly basis? I've always split between Ops and Software, doing both, at startups. Never did have a successful exit despite being a millionaire on paper at least once. These days I find that I make more of an impact doing cross functional / cross team architecture vs writing code myself. I could still do it, but I find that the time is just not there in the day. I spend most of my time driving cross functional projects from a technical / design perspective and helping answer questions / acting as a subject matter expert. Do roles like this even exist at FAANG? What about other companies? The role I'm in now wasn't necessarily what I was originally hired to do. I don't believe that I've ever really seen a similar role posted. So I'm also wondering if I can really make a career out of this type of thing or not.
Salesforce. Microsoft has them as well.
Yes, Amazon Principal Engineer is exactly what you described