How To Become An Architectural Consultant: What It Is and Career Path

What is an architectural consultant and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Martin Gold FAIA

Architecture consultants are business managers or owners who own or work for independent architecture firms. They are licensed professionals that work in various private sectors or residential work. As an architecture consultant, your job is to plan creative and innovative building design solutions for clients.

Master planning and project management, as well as design, are core values of your job description. You are expected to design aesthetically pleasing and highly functional landscaping and building and ensure projects are designed well by providing technical competence. You must be able to provide a workspace that meets health and safety concerns and provides a solution to budget problems without compromising the actual goals.

As an architecture consultant, you are also expected to be able to turn ideas into tangible structures that meet the needs of your communities and clients. The ability to be creative, visualizing skills, organizational skills, technical knowledge skills, business, and attention to detail are the major skills required for this role. The average salary of an architecture consultant annually is $97,000. However, a bachelor's degree in Architecture or other related fields is required.

What general advice would you give to an architectural consultant?

Martin Gold FAIA

Associate Professor | Architect, University of Florida

The most widespread complaint from people in the field is that it consumes ones attention, requires long hours, and relative to other professions, such as medicine, law, accounting, or engineering, the pay is lower on a per hour basis. On the other hand, architecture is more of an art than other professions and offers opportunities for creative people to have prosperous careers. The famous French architect Le Corbusier would say, architecture is a way of life.

ScoreArchitectural ConsultantUS Average

Salary

5.7

Avg. Salary $72,886

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.2

Growth rate 3%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.6

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.32%

Asian 16.37%

Black or African American 2.33%

Hispanic or Latino 12.08%

Unknown 3.96%

White 64.94%

Gender

female 21.56%

male 78.44%

Age - 45

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 45

Stress level

7.2

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

10.0

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

3.5

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become an architectural consultant

Explore architectural consultant education requirements

Most common architectural consultant degrees

Bachelor's

66.5 %

Master's

21.8 %

Associate

8.6 %

Start to develop specific architectural consultant skills

Skills	Percentages
Cloud	11.30%
API	5.40%
Java	4.69%
Design Solutions	4.11%
Business Problems	3.88%

Complete relevant architectural consultant training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 2-4 years on post-employment, on-the-job training. New architectural consultants learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as an architectural consultant based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real architectural consultant resumes.

Research architectural consultant duties and responsibilities

Lead technical projects utilizing SharePoint, ASP.NET, Javascript, and database technologies.
Experience in SDLC processes, and ability to manage application-relate projects from customer requirements definition to delivering application content solutions.
Used WPF and MVVM in the UI and ASP.NET WebAPI in the business layer.
Design and help develop ETL process using IBM DataStage to process large volumes of data.

Prepare your architectural consultant resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your architectural consultant resume.

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