I want to learn more about how technical these roles are in the day to day as I plan my next move from SDE. Please help me get a picture of how much of the pipeline Solution Architects actually own. 1 YOE, 85k
How technical? Its system design and implementation. All technical from end to end. From customer (internal or external) requirements, goals, budget, PM skills, etc. Depends on infra SA or app SA. Very generic level 101 example: architect a solution for a scalable, HA, LAMP stack behind a ELB in a net-new AWS tenant then deploy it through IaC tooling like Terraform. If you're an application SA, then its similar to system design questions you faced in interviews. If you're like most SDEs and are weak(er) in system design, this could present a challenge (good and bad), but you'd likely excel at the coding/deployment part.
This.. I've been an infrastructure SA for the last 6 years. VERY little coding at all. More problem solving via whiteboard and system design than anything else. Being able to talk to customers (KEY), understand business challenges and then building solutions to help solve those business issues using a wide variety of products and services.
Yup I love it. Been in infrastructure my whole career. 10 ish years now
Depends can go from zero all the way to 10 hours a day.
What kinds of technical things are you working on? I haven't been able to get a good sense from job descriptions