Nearest BLS code is 15-1241. Glassdoor/Levels medians (~$220K) are dominated by vendor and consulting SA roles (AWS, Microsoft, partners) with commission; in-house enterprise architects pay closer to the BLS figure.
Experience to get here
Entry level5-7 years of engineering or infrastructure work before the first architect title
Typical title7-12 years
Bachelor's in CS/CIS/engineering preferred on most postings; BLS lists 5+ years in a related occupation as the norm. Deep hands-on experience outweighs the degree.
Typical prior roles
Senior Software EngineerCloud Infrastructure EngineerDevOps / SRENetwork or Systems Administrator
Must have
Designing cloud and hybrid solutions on a major cloud (Azure Well-Architected or AWS equivalent)
Breadth across networking, identity, security, data platforms, and DR
Writing design docs and diagrams others can build from
Vendor evaluation and build-vs-buy analysis
Communicating trade-offs to executives and engineers
Milestones people hit first
Owned the target architecture for a migration or major system
Led a technical design review that changed a project's direction
Ran a vendor selection with a written evaluation
Set a standard (integration pattern, reference architecture) adopted across teams
Time: 2-4 months Prerequisites: None formal; 3+ years industry incl. 1+ on Google Cloud recommended
The GCP equivalent; relevant where the company or its clients run on Google Cloud.
Training & learning
AWS Skill Builder: Architect learning pathFREEAmazon Web Services · learning path · free tier (900+ courses); $29/mo or $449/yr for exam prep · self-pacedOfficial free courses aligned to the SA Associate and Professional exams.
Microsoft Learn (AZ-104 / AZ-305 paths)FREEMicrosoft · learning path · free (self-paced modules) · 30-60 hoursFree official prep for the Azure certs some SA postings require.
Google Cloud training and skill badgesFREEGoogle Cloud · learning path · low/no cost; free credit programs; labs use credits · self-pacedHands-on labs for GCP architecture patterns.
HashiCorp Terraform tutorialsFREEHashiCorp · course · free · 10-20 hoursArchitects are expected to express designs as infrastructure code.
TOGAF (enterprise architecture) is commonly cited for this role but is omitted here. Microsoft exam fees are region-priced and not published by the vendor. range_low uses the in-house posting minimum ($115K); BLS 10th percentile is $79,900.
Figures are US, from the sources listed, and change often; verify before deciding.