Hi All, Thoughts on the Solution Architect (SA)vs SDE career growth paths and experiences. Which domain is good long term based on opportunities, pay, Benifits, skills, etc. (The SA can be the roles of Solution Architects, Technical Sales Engineers, Customer Engineers, CSA and all here) More specific topics: - What companies have SAs? What does the career path look for them? - For folks in the Cloud Solutions Architect /CE/SA (AWS/GCP/Azure/more) roles: How is the role? How is the career path? - I keep hearing Sales and the related roles will be automated (already are digital) in the future, feel that’s far from reality at this moment. Whats the future growth paths for these client-facing roles - Is the Pay better in SA roles or SDEs/engineering groups I have seen SA roles have a commission/incentive-based pay structure, and the SA/Tech Sales folks get paid more than engineering due to the commission structure. - From a skill perspective do you see value in investing in Product based Solution Architecture or Application Architecture? The SA work is generally aligned are more towards Architecture from a System Design, Product based design and development (Eg. Cloud computing platform) rather than Application Architecture (SOA, Microservices, etc) I think a combo of Solution+App Architect may expand opportunities to the space of Technical Architecture in Engineering domains rather than just Sales, Product management, Account management (Clients). Most SAs are customer facing in pre/post sales roles - From available opportunities I feel an SDE will have options anywhere where there is a IT shop (starting from tech companies to Industry- bank, retail etc) while SAs are more restricted to Cloud companies (AWS, GCP, Azure) and a little more like IBM, Oracle and do. Where else do SAs have opportunities? How is working there? #solutionarchitect #sde #career #tech
curious too.
If you realize, the jobs that most CEOs/Execs start with are consulting. Sales actually can never be automated fully since you need to move people with emotions to see transactions happening. What’s the point of building something that isn’t profitable? The art of selling is a skill in itself. You can’t spend ten years building things behind a desk without understanding the real impact. Learning how to pitch a product, negotiate and see things in a bigger picture. Most people who start as SAs, rarely stay as one forever. They have the flexibility of switching to engineering roles as well as PM. Their breadth in each domain gives them this upside (Analytics/Infra Modernization/ AI ML/ Serverless). They can also become CTOs. Engineers typically have a higher pay band in the beginning but it will hit a cliff. In order to move up, you need high visibility roles so you can build your brand. Some companies like google offer commission on top of base/stocks/sign ons. The TC package can match some SDEs for sure. Also, don’t forget — getting promoted is much much much quicker. The average time I see on LinkedIn is around 1.5-2 years. For the amount of time you put in (no on-calls), I’m 100% ok with taking 5-10K lesser than SWEs.
Thanks for this very interesting perspective. I have been in engineering for 8-10 years now and have been wondering if this is for myself. Engineering can become very boring specially if you enjoy people interaction more. Sometimes the only human interaction I have with people is during standups. I do agree it could be possible to venture into any profile from being a solutions architect. Two questions - is SA pay significantly lower than sde’s ( imo its not) and what are some of the high impact projects that SA’s work on?
Some of it's true. The gap between SA and SWE is not just 15k. It's over 100 sometimes over 200k SA as a career path is a dead end. So you have to assume one needs to switch to something different. The switch itself is very hard and not many people make it.
Being an SA gives you exposure to multifaceted problems, you would need to speak to people and learn about the issues they face. So you serve as a bridge between the product and service engineering teams. No. SA pay is not significantly lower. I wouldn’t consider 10-15K a lot. Considering a good WLB + No On Calls. You also get commission based on your performance so it balances it out. Your base won’t be as high tho. But it balances it out. Some of the high impact projects: successfully migrating solutions from another cloud provider, scoring a deal with a global customer, launching a product, presenting in front of hundreds, being the face of the company, writing technical content or even successfully architecting a solution that can cut down millions in operation costs.
Thanks so much. Are people able to venture into other careers like data engineering, sde, product manager etc after being an SA? It does sound interesting as I feel it involves a lot of people interaction.
Solutions Architects are also referred to as Solutions Engineers/Sales Engineers/Customer Engineers. Just a PSA. It depends. If you’re in a role that does coding on top of your regular SA job, then yes, you qualify to apply for engineering roles. I do have friends who convert from SA to SDE with no issues. SA to Technical PM (Rarely a business PM). Data engineering to SA is more frequent (SA is typically a step up). Internal interviews only involve 1-2 loops at Amazon which is a lot more flexible than many companies. Let me know if you want me to refer you.
Why would a sa not fo a business pm job? Less money?
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Good question. I am curious too,