Career roadmap

Solutions Architect

Translate a customer's problem into a design that can actually be built, bought and supported.

Time: 7-10 months part-time
Entry bar: Several years of engineering or infrastructure experience plus communication ability.
Stages: 5 · 25 topics

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Before you start Solutions Architect

6-8 weeks · 0/5 topics

Breadth over depth: enough across every layer to design credibly and know when to call an expert.

Patterns and their trade-offs, expressed in terms a customer understands.
Ch — Monolith vs Microservices
- Monolith, services and event-driven designs
- Integration patterns and APIs
- Caching and state management
- Common failure modes
Where solutions actually run, and what they cost to run there.
- Compute, storage and networking choices
- Managed services versus self-hosted
- High availability and disaster recovery
- Cost modelling
Most enterprise solutions are integration problems wearing a different hat.
- Data modelling and storage selection
- ETL, streaming and synchronisation
- Master data and identity resolution
- Legacy system integration
The constraint set that shapes enterprise designs more than any preference.
- Identity and access design
- Encryption and key management
- Regulatory constraints by industry
- Security review expectations
The requirements customers forget to state and then judge you on.
- Performance and scalability targets
- Availability and recovery objectives
- Operability and supportability
- Total cost of ownership

BuildDesign and document a complete solution spanning application, data, integration and infrastructure.

5-6 weeks · 0/5 topics

The half that separates a solutions architect from an internal architect.

Customers describe solutions, not problems. Getting underneath that is the skill.
- Requirements elicitation techniques
- Identifying the real constraint
- Stakeholder mapping
- Current state assessment
Live design in front of a customer is a routine part of the job.
- Whiteboarding a solution live
- Adjusting depth to the audience
- Handling hostile technical questions
- Demonstrations that land
The deliverable customers buy, and the one interviews ask to see.
- Solution design documents
- Options analysis with trade-offs
- Effort and cost estimation
- Assumptions and exclusions
Technical objections are often commercial or political in disguise.
- Distinguishing real from proxy objections
- Competitive positioning honestly
- Managing scepticism
- Knowing when to concede
Solutions architects sit close to the deal, and are measured on it.
- Sales cycle and your role in it
- Licensing and pricing models
- Scoping to budget
- Working with account teams

BuildRun a full discovery-to-proposal cycle for a real or simulated customer requirement.

4-6 weeks · 0/5 topics

A design that cannot be delivered by the available team is a bad design.

Honest assessment early prevents failed projects later.
- Technical risk identification
- Proof of concept scoping
- Dependency and assumption tracking
- Saying a requirement is not achievable
Big-bang delivery is how enterprise projects fail publicly.
- Incremental delivery design
- Coexistence and cutover strategy
- Rollback planning
- Value delivered per phase
The design must survive being implemented by people who were not in the room.
- Documentation delivery teams can use
- Knowledge transfer sessions
- Staying engaged through build
- Handling design changes in flight
Someone has to run this after you have moved to the next customer.
- Monitoring and support requirements
- Runbooks and operational documentation
- Skills required to operate it
- Managed service versus customer-run
Enterprise designs go through review boards with their own criteria.
- Architecture review boards
- Standards and reference architectures
- Exception requests
- Documentation standards

BuildProduce a delivery plan with phases, risks and a defined handover to an implementation team.

5-7 weeks · 0/5 topics

Breadth gets you in the room; one deep specialism wins the deal.

Vendors and partners hire for specific platform depth.
- One cloud platform in depth
- Vendor product portfolio knowledge
- Competitive landscape
- Certification paths
Domain fluency shortens every conversation with a customer.
- Regulatory environment for a sector
- Common architectures in that industry
- Typical legacy estate
- Sector-specific vocabulary
Currently the most requested capability in enterprise conversations.
Ch — RAG
- Assessing AI use case viability
- Retrieval architecture for enterprise data
- Cost and evaluation planning
- Setting realistic expectations
Building something real, fast, to prove a point in a sales cycle.
- Scoping a POC to answer one question
- Building quickly without building badly
- Success criteria agreed up front
- Avoiding POC becoming production
Credibility erodes fast if you cannot build what you design.
- Regular building and prototyping
- Keeping current with platform changes
- Reading implementation code
- Home lab and experimentation

BuildReach certified, demonstrable depth in one platform and build a reference implementation.

3-4 weeks · 0/5 topics

Interviews are heavily presentation-based, often with a take-home design and a pitch.

Whiteboard a solution for a described customer scenario.
- Requirements gathering out loud
- Design with justified choices
- Cost and risk discussion
- Handling changed requirements mid-question
Common format: a take-home scenario presented to a mock customer panel.
- Structuring a solution presentation
- Pitching to mixed technical levels
- Handling interruptions and challenges
- Time management
Breadth is assumed; they will probe one area to see how deep it goes.
- Deep questions in your specialism
- Troubleshooting scenarios
- Comparing competing technologies
- Admitting the limits of your knowledge
Difficult customer situations, handled live.
- A customer demanding an unwise design
- Managing a failed proof of concept
- Competing against an incumbent
- Delivering bad news about feasibility
Design documents and reference implementations.
- Sanitised solution design documents
- A reference implementation repository
- Platform certifications
- Recorded technical presentation

BuildA polished reference solution with a design document and a rehearsed presentation.

Vendors, consultancies and enterprise IT. Often customer-facing and commission-adjacent, which raises the ceiling considerably.

Content last reviewed 2026-08-31. Guidance only — no institute or paid placement is endorsed anywhere in this book.