Senior architects are architects with extensive industry experience and can serve as mentors, managers, and advisors. They develop and interpret various structural designs. Senior architects are tasked with evaluating and designing architectural and engineering plans. Also, they oversee the work of other architects and recommend improvements or schedule workshops as required. Furthermore, they guide subcontractors like builders, plumbers, and electricians and assist them in interpreting design specifications. The architects ensure all plans adhere to relevant health and safety regulations.

Senior architects hold at least a bachelor's degree in a field like architecture, engineering, or design. For this role, you will need a state license and several years of experience. You must possess leadership, networking, attention to detail, interpersonal, analytical, and communication skills. You must also be proficient in computer-aided design software. Senior architects earn as high as $197,000 and a low of $101,000. The average salary for the role is $140,946.

What Does a Senior Architect Do

There are certain skills that many senior architects have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed analytical skills, communication skills and creativity.

Learn more about what a Senior Architect does

How To Become a Senior Architect

If you're interested in becoming a senior architect, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 69.0% of senior architects have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 23.0% of senior architects have master's degrees. Even though most senior architects have a college degree, it's impossible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.

Learn More About How To Become a Senior Architect

Senior Architect Career Paths

Average Salary for a Senior Architect

Senior Architects in America make an average salary of $91,624 per year or $44 per hour. The top 10 percent makes over $143,000 per year, while the bottom 10 percent under $58,000 per year.
Average Senior Architect Salary
$91,624 Yearly
$44.05 hourly

What Am I Worth?

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Roles and Types of Senior Architect

The role of a senior architect includes a wide range of responsibilities. These responsibilities can vary based on an individual's specific job, company, or industry.Here are some general senior architect responsibilities:

  • Responsible for the enterprise, multi-petabyte storage infrastructure comprised of emc, isilon, ibm, dell, hp, sun
  • Performs the necessary leadership, facilitation, analysis
  • Performs various tasks throughout each project phase. Prepares

There are several types of senior architect, including:

Architect

Role:

From designing to planning, architects have a hand in houses, factories, office buildings and other structures. Working from an office, architects spend their days developing plans for such structures and meet with clients to ensure their dream is being carried out.

While it all sounds like fun and games, you do need a good amount of education and experience to be able to become an architect. A bachelor's degree is step one. Then you need experience through a paid internship. Before accepting a job offer, you even need to pass the Architect Registration Examination.
  • Average Salary: $86,635
  • Degree: Bachelor's Degree

Solutions Architect

Role:

A solutions architect develops and oversees the processes involved in integrating IT systems to meet an organization's needs. He/She reviews project challenges to identify alternatives and minimize risks, evaluates the existing system infrastructure, and works with project management and IT development teams to improve the infrastructure. Additionally, he/she informs stakeholders on the progress of product development processes and budgets. Asides from that, he/she develops and implements a framework for necessary contributions from different departments.

Most solutions architects have at least a bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related field. Employers will require at least six years of relevant work experience. However, you must possess technical, analytical, communication, project management, and leadership skills. You must also have experience developing IT and cloud infrastructure. Plus, you must be familiar with operating systems. Solutions architects are paid about $127,285 a year. Their salary is between $90,000 and $180,000.

  • Average Salary: $116,327
  • Degree: Bachelor's Degree

Project Architect

Role:

If you like to earn an annual average salary of $72,714, consider applying as a Project Architect. with a job growth rate of 8%, you also have the chance to further your career depending on the path you plan to pursue. You can be a Project Manager, an Owner/Operator, a Construction Manager, and a Senior Construction Manager.

As a Project Architect, you will be spearheading and overseeing the design and development of construction projects. You will be coordinating with the client in order to identify the needs of the projects and understand what needs to be done. You will be preparing documents and ensuring that procedures meet the laws.

As you can see, you have a great responsibility, so you need to possess certain skills and traits. You need to have great organizational skills, good visualization skills, and excellent communication skills. You will be dealing and working with different people, so you should know how to work with them.

  • Average Salary: $76,812
  • Degree: Bachelor's Degree

States With The Most Senior Architect Jobs

Mouse over a state to see the number of active senior architect jobs in each state. The darker areas on the map show where senior architects earn the highest salaries across all 50 states.

Average Salary: Job Openings:

Number Of Senior Architect Jobs By State

RankStateNumber of JobsAverage Salary
1California4,384$104,720
2Texas3,119$81,437
3Illinois1,745$83,979
4Virginia1,696$92,305
5New York1,619$94,573
6Florida1,565$75,238
7Pennsylvania1,425$90,755
8Georgia1,389$98,385
9North Carolina1,299$77,854
10Massachusetts1,249$94,932
11New Jersey1,214$74,065
12Ohio1,040$84,778
13Washington1,001$93,702
14Maryland992$94,654
15Michigan753$75,577
16Colorado736$87,062
17Minnesota731$81,404
18Oregon706$82,404
19Arizona701$89,843
20Missouri620$76,114
21Connecticut516$84,917
22Indiana506$83,566
23Utah463$90,340
24Wisconsin461$75,860
25Tennessee424$73,369
26Alabama303$88,039
27South Carolina299$85,958
28Kentucky286$67,492
29Nevada259$79,134
30Kansas248$90,368
31Iowa244$81,375
32Arkansas238$67,640
33Rhode Island231$102,157
34Nebraska204$80,040
35Idaho192$64,115
36New Hampshire189$100,380
37Oklahoma189$68,830
38Louisiana184$98,042
39New Mexico165$93,167
40North Dakota160$91,435
41Delaware141$76,241
42Montana131$80,578
43Vermont115$90,501
44Maine110$94,898
45Mississippi98$83,985
46Hawaii97$110,096
47West Virginia93$83,676
48South Dakota88$88,305
49Alaska75$97,623
50Wyoming63$93,523

Senior Architect Education

Senior Architect Majors

Senior Architect Degrees

Bachelors

69.0 %

Masters

23.0 %

Associate

3.2 %

Top Colleges for Senior Architects

1. Cornell University

Ithaca, NY • Private

In-State Tuition

$55,188

Enrollment

15,105

Admissions
Most Popular Majors
Business
Computer Science
Electrical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Physics

2. University of Southern California

Los Angeles, CA • Private

In-State Tuition

$56,225

Enrollment

19,548

Admissions
Most Popular Majors
Business
Computer Science
Electrical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Engineering

3. University of Texas at Austin

Austin, TX • Private

In-State Tuition

$10,610

Enrollment

40,329

Admissions
Most Popular Majors
Business
Electrical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Management Information Systems
Physics

4. Harvard University

Cambridge, MA • Private

In-State Tuition

$50,420

Enrollment

7,582

Admissions
Most Popular Majors
Business
Computer Science
Finance
Computer Engineering
Physics

5. University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, PA • Private

In-State Tuition

$55,584

Enrollment

10,764

Admissions
Most Popular Majors
Business
Computer Science
Mechanical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Physics

6. University of Washington

Seattle, WA • Private

In-State Tuition

$11,207

Enrollment

30,905

Admissions
Most Popular Majors
Business
Mathematics
Computer Science
Electrical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering

7. Georgia Institute of Technology

Atlanta, GA • Private

In-State Tuition

$12,424

Enrollment

15,201

Admissions
Most Popular Majors
Mechanical Engineering
Business
Electrical Engineering
Computer Science
Computer Engineering

8. Columbia University in the City of New York

New York, NY • Private

In-State Tuition

$59,430

Enrollment

8,216

Admissions
Most Popular Majors
Business
Computer Science
Electrical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Mathematics

9. University of California, Berkeley

Berkeley, CA • Private

In-State Tuition

$14,184

Enrollment

30,845

Admissions
Most Popular Majors
Business
Computer Science
Electrical Engineering
Mathematics
Mechanical Engineering

10. Lehigh University

Bethlehem, PA • Private

In-State Tuition

$52,930

Enrollment

5,030

Admissions
Most Popular Majors
Finance
Mechanical Engineering
Computer Science
Business
Electrical Engineering

Top Skills For a Senior Architect

The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 8.2% of senior architects listed cloud on their resume, but soft skills such as analytical skills and communication skills are important as well.

Choose From 10+ Customizable Senior Architect Resume templates

Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Senior Architect templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Senior Architect resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.

Senior Architect Resume
Senior Architect Resume
Senior Architect Resume
Senior Architect Resume
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Senior Architect Resume

Senior Architect Demographics

Senior Architect Gender Distribution

Male
Male
89%
Female
Female
11%

After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:

  • Among senior architects, 11.0% of them are women, while 89.0% are men.

  • The most common race/ethnicity among senior architects is White, which makes up 65.5% of all senior architects.

  • The most common foreign language among senior architects is Spanish at 24.3%.

Online Courses For Senior Architect That You May Like

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1. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Architect Professional

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Welcome to the course Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Architect Professional. This course prepares you for the highest level of OCI certification, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Architect Professional. Take a deep dive into designing and deploying Oracle Cloud Infrastructure solutions and learn Cloud-Native, microservices and serverless architectures...

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2. Architecting Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure with Anthos

coursera

This specialization is intended for technical engineers, architects, and administrators using Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Kubernetes, and Istio to create, integrate, or modernize solutions. You will learn modernizing, managing, and observing microservices-based applications that span multiple clusters in GCP, on-premises, or other cloud providers...

See More on Coursera

3. Hands on Google cloud platform(GCP)- Cloud Architect

udemy
4
(816)

Cloud Architect Certification...

See More on Udemy
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Best States For a Senior Architect

Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a senior architect. The best states for people in this position are Hawaii, California, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. Senior architects make the most in Hawaii with an average salary of $110,096. Whereas in California and Rhode Island, they would average $104,720 and $102,157, respectively. While senior architects would only make an average of $100,380 in New Hampshire, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.

1. District of Columbia

Total Senior Architect Jobs: 651
Highest 10% Earn:
$182,000
Location Quotient:
3.13

2. Rhode Island

Total Senior Architect Jobs: 231
Highest 10% Earn:
$150,000
Location Quotient:
1.53

3. Georgia

Total Senior Architect Jobs: 1,389
Highest 10% Earn:
$152,000
Location Quotient:
1.08
Full List Of Best States For Senior Architects

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Top Senior Architect Employers

We've made finding a great employer to work for easy by doing the hard work for you. We looked into employers that employ senior architects and discovered their number of senior architect opportunities and average salary. Through our research, we concluded that Wipro was the best, especially with an average salary of $71,351. Salesforce follows up with an average salary of $138,924, and then comes NVIDIA with an average of $157,933. In addition, we know most people would rather work from home. So instead of having to change careers, we identified the best employers for remote work as a senior architect. The employers include CSG, VMware, and The College Board

Most Common Employers For Senior Architect

RankCompanyAverage SalaryHourly RateJob Openings
1NVIDIA$157,933$75.93187
2Walmart$157,584$75.7630
3Amazon$149,683$71.9679
4Akamai Technologies$146,498$70.4327
5TIBCO Software$144,623$69.5357
6Virtusa$141,540$68.0565
7Publicis Sapient$139,376$67.0152
8Salesforce$138,924$66.79320
9Guidewire Software$134,725$64.7728
10American Red Cross$128,684$61.8748