How to hire a chief architect

How to hire a chief architect, step by step

Here's a step-by-step chief architect hiring guide:

• Step 1: Identify your hiring needs
• Step 2: Create an ideal candidate profile
• Step 3: Make a budget
• Step 4: Write a chief architect job description
• Step 5: Post your job
• Step 6: Interview candidates
• Step 7: Send a job offer and onboard your new chief architect
• Step 8: Go through the hiring process checklist

What does a chief architect do?

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1. Identify your hiring needs

   Before you start hiring a chief architect, identify what type of worker you actually need. Certain positions might call for a full-time employee, while others can be done by a part-time worker or contractor.

   Determine employee vs contractor status

   Is the person you're thinking of hiring a US citizen or green card holder?

   Yes

   No

   A chief architect's background is also an important factor in determining whether they'll be a good fit for the position. For example, chief architects from different industries or fields will have radically different experiences and will bring different viewpoints to the role. You also need to consider the candidate's previous level of experience to make sure they'll be comfortable with the job's level of seniority.

   The following list breaks down different types of chief architects and their corresponding salaries.

   Type of Chief Architect	Description	Hourly rate
   Chief Architect		$53-122
   Director Of Software Development	A director of software development is primarily in charge of overseeing the workflow and the workforce involved in the entire software development process. Their responsibilities also include creating strategies for optimal performance, coordinating with different teams and departments to identify strengths and weaknesses, implementing training and workshop programs, and liaising with external agencies, including key clients... Show more	$52-109
   Information Technology Architect	An information technology architect is responsible for designing and creating new technology systems and optimizing the performance of existing ones. Information technology architects analyze the business needs and client requirements to identify system features and technology infrastructure according to budget limitations and timetables... Show more	$42-73

   Show more

2. Create an ideal candidate profile

   Common skills:

   • Cloud
   • Infrastructure
   • Digital Transformation
   • AWS
   • Java
   • C++
   • Analytics
   • Web Application Development
   • Software Development
   • System Architecture
   • API
   • Python
   • Emerging Technologies
   • Azure

   Check all skills

   Responsibilities:

   • Manage cross-functional product team in creation of cloud application product that including office productivity software.
   • Develop and implement risk strategy, risk governance, risk management, risk quantification and inter-dependencies to achieve desire company strategy.
   • Leverage AWS and Linux virtual machines for an active-active network of cloud-base and on-premise data centers.
   • Work with external resources for xml base integration.
   • Provide primary support for a legacy Ruby/MongoDB system host in AWS.
   • Design and deploy enterprise e-mail system for customer using Linux, sendmail, and various IMAP/POP3 services.

   More chief architect duties

3. Make a budget

   Including a salary range in your chief architect job description helps attract top candidates to the position. A chief architect salary can be affected by several factors, such as geography, experience, seniority, certifications, and the prestige of the hiring company.

   For example, the average salary for a chief architect in Maine may be lower than in Washington, and an entry-level chief architect usually earns less than a senior-level chief architect. Additionally, a chief architect with certifications may command a higher salary, and working for a well-known company or start-up may also impact an employee's pay.

   Average chief architect salary

   $168,836yearly

   $81.17 hourly rate

   ---

   Entry-level chief architect salary

   $111,000 yearly salary

   Updated December 22, 2025

   Average chief architect salary by state

   Rank	State	Avg. salary	Hourly rate
   1	California	$197,600	$95
   2	Massachusetts	$169,881	$82
   3	Texas	$156,046	$75
   4	Virginia	$155,956	$75
   5	Colorado	$155,632	$75
   6	New Jersey	$151,880	$73
   7	North Carolina	$149,959	$72
   8	District of Columbia	$144,243	$69
   9	Illinois	$141,250	$68
   10	Georgia	$139,804	$67
   11	New York	$139,382	$67
   12	Maryland	$136,945	$66
   13	Minnesota	$135,158	$65
   14	Ohio	$131,103	$63
   15	Florida	$110,699	$53

   Average chief architect salary by company

   Company

   Rank	Company	Average salary	Hourly rate	Job openings
   1	Zscaler	$213,141	$102.47	9
   2	RichRelevance	$208,609	$100.29
   3	Capgemini	$196,133	$94.29	173
   4	Citi	$195,520	$94.00	21
   5	Teradata	$194,622	$93.57	150
   6	Yellowpages	$193,205	$92.89
   7	McAfee	$192,305	$92.45
   8	Kronos Incorporated	$190,681	$91.67
   9	SAP	$184,317	$88.61	140
   10	Unisys	$183,175	$88.06	4
   11	Insight Enterprises	$180,698	$86.87	1
   12	General Dynamics Mission Systems	$180,484	$86.77
   13	JPMorgan Chase & Co.	$176,489	$84.85	291
   14	Nokia	$173,751	$83.53	21
   15	CyberCoders	$171,779	$82.59	1
   16	Integrated Resources	$169,173	$81.33	22
   17	DISH Network	$168,868	$81.19
   18	Autodesk	$167,953	$80.75	25
   19	Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan	$167,942	$80.74	3
   20	Ahead USA	$166,218	$79.91	3

4. Writing a chief architect job description

   A chief architect job description should include a summary of the role, required skills, and a list of responsibilities. It's also good to include a salary range and the first name of the hiring manager. Below, you can find an example of a chief architect job description:

   Chief architect job description example

   Looking for a Chief Architect to help determine, motivate, and lead the technical direction of the company. The Chief Architect will oversee technology and recommend solutions that work and scale. Has adopted a microservice infrastructure hosted via scalable PaaS technologies utilizing a continuous delivery framework built on top of docker and mesos. You will own the continued execution and future evolution of this strategy. The most important qualification for the Chief Architect is full-stack, hands-on experience building, deploying, and maintaining technical solutions in an entrepreneurial environment. We code predominantly in Java, Javascript and Scala. Works with a diverse ecosystem of technologies such as Play, Spring Boot, Angular, Tomcat, Thrift, REST, Zookeeper, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, ElasticSearch, Kafka, Storm and Hadoop.
   Responsibilities
   
   • Setting and motivating overall corporate technical direction.
   • Analyzing and evaluating existing architecture and design.
   • Reviewing project designs to determine their technical viability and their relevance to the business goals.
   • Remaining up-to-date on current web and infrastructure technologies and anticipating future trends.
   • Recommending and deciding technical solutions and guiding engineering teams toward a common methodology.
   • Prototyping platform technologies and tools with a dedicated dev team.
   • Identify opportunities for both incremental and transformational improvements to engineering productivity (software deployment, designing, writing and testing production code, creating unit and automated regression tests, etc.) and advocating and implementing solutions.
   • Own the solution you recommend end to end (i.e. make sure it works and track it as it scales).
   • Provide technical leadership in engineering productivity and development practices across the department.
   • Successfully and independently lead large, cross team tech projects and initiatives.
   • Ensure architecture is built and managed in a scalable manner.
   • Work collaboratively with peers and customers (developers, team leads, QA, Systems, UX, and Product).
   • Keep us moving quickly in the short and long term, by helping set architectural direction, contributing software design expertise, spreading good engineering practices, and leading projects most critical to the business.
   
   Qualifications
   
   • Highly effective communication and collaboration skills
   • Ability to work well with other regardless of team or department to achieve company goals while demonstrating a consistently positive and constructive attitude.
   • Passion for technology, particularly tools and languages
   • Commitment to and interest in code and product quality
   • Strong customer focus (engineers are your primary customers)
   • Strong sense of responsibility and ownership
   • Technical leadership & strong independent problem solving skills
   • Familiarity with current, relevant PaaS solutions (e.g. Mesos, Marathon, Kubernetes, CoreOS)
   • Experience with Big Data Technology (e.g. Apache Storm, Hadoop, Kafka,)
   • Advanced degree in Computer Science or Computer Engineering, plus relevant experience
   • Excellent coding and design skills
   • Experience building, scaling and continuously-delivering high-uptime web based solutions

   Copy this example

   

5. Post your job

   There are various strategies that you can use to find the right chief architect for your business:

   • Consider promoting from within or recruiting from your existing workforce.
   • Ask for referrals from friends, family members, and current employees.
   • Attend job fairs at local colleges to find candidates who meet your education requirements.
   • Use social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to reach potential job candidates.

   Post your job online:

   • Post your chief architect job on Zippia to find and recruit chief architect candidates who meet your exact specifications.
   • Use field-specific websites.
   • Post a job on free websites.

6. Interview candidates

   Recruiting chief architects requires you to bring your A-game to the interview process. The first interview should introduce the company and the role to the candidate as much as they present their background experience and reasons for applying for the job. During later interviews, you can go into more detail about the technical details of the job and ask behavioral questions to gauge how they'd fit into your current company culture.

   Remember to include a few questions that allow candidates to expand on their strengths in their own words. Asking about their unique skills might reveal things you'd miss otherwise. At this point, good candidates can move on to the technical interview.

   Sometimes, it's not enough to interview chief architect candidates, so you can ask them to do a test project. If you are not a technical person and don't know what a test project should be, you can use these websites:

   • TestDome
   • CodeSignal
   • Testlify
   • BarRaiser
   • Coderbyte

   The right interview questions can help you assess a candidate's hard skills, behavioral intelligence, and soft skills.

7. Send a job offer and onboard your new chief architect

   Once you've decided on a perfect chief architect candidate, it's time to write an offer letter. In addition to salary, it should include benefits and perks available to the employee. Qualified candidates may be considered for other positions, so make sure your offer is competitive. Candidates may wish to negotiate. Once you've settled on the details, formalize your agreement with a contract.

   It's equally important to follow up with applicants who don't get the job with an email letting them know that the position has been filled.

   To prepare for the new chief architect first day, you should share an onboarding schedule with them that covers their first period on the job. You should also quickly complete any necessary paperwork, such as employee action forms and onboarding documents like I-9, benefits enrollment, and federal and state tax forms. Finally, Human Resources must ensure a new employee file is created for internal record keeping.

8. Go through the hiring process checklist

   • Determine employee type (full-time, part-time, contractor, etc.)
   • Submit a job requisition form to the HR department
   • Define job responsibilities and requirements
   • Establish budget and timeline
   • Determine hiring decision makers for the role
   • Write job description
   • Post job on job boards, company website, etc.
   • Promote the job internally
   • Process applications through applicant tracking system
   • Review resumes and cover letters
   • Shortlist candidates for screening
   • Hold phone/virtual interview screening with first round of candidates
   • Conduct in-person interviews with top candidates from first round
   • Score candidates based on weighted criteria (e.g., experience, education, background, cultural fit, skill set, etc.)
   • Conduct background checks on top candidates
   • Check references of top candidates
   • Consult with HR and hiring decision makers on job offer specifics
   • Extend offer to top candidate(s)
   • Receive formal job offer acceptance and signed employment contract
   • Inform other candidates that the position has been filled
   • Set and communicate onboarding schedule to new hire(s)
   • Complete new hire paperwork (i9, benefits enrollment, tax forms, etc.)

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How much does it cost to hire a chief architect?