Also called: Solutions Architect, Principal Engineer
Decides how a large software system should be structured so many teams can build it without it collapsing.
You spend the day at whiteboards and in design reviews, choosing which technologies to use and drawing how dozens of services fit together. You write fewer lines of code than you used to, but your decisions shape millions of them.
Senior, experience-gated role; estimates from industry salary surveys.
Approximate: anchored on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for a broader job group.
Bachelor's degree (4-year), about 12 years after high school. Bachelor's plus roughly 8-15 years of hands-on engineering experience.
Ways in: 4-year college, On-the-job training. Training cost: $15k – $60k.
Majors to look at: Computer Science, Software Engineering.
Growing much faster than average (about 10% over 10 years). Grouped with software developers by BLS.
Low risk in 5 years, medium in 10. AI can draft designs and diagrams, but trade-off decisions for huge systems and teams need senior human judgment.
Classes: AP Computer Science A, AP Calculus, Debate or speech.
Official data: O*NET occupation 15-1252.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.