Systems Architect

Career Area: Information Technology

Occupation Group: Network and Systems Engineering

Salary

Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.

An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.

A typical Systems Architect earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $116,600

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $115,404

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Defines standards and requirements of an information technology system. Install both hardware and software during the setup and maintenance of systems. Provision and configure network ensuring applications and infrastructure can communicate to meet business requirements.

Employment Trends

The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.

Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:

Skills

A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:

Baseline Skills

The following are baseline skills every Systems Architect is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:

• Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
• Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
• Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.
• Problem Solving: Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems.
• Research: Experience performing creative and systematic work to understand a product, market, or customer, either before building a new solution, or to troubleshoot an existing issue

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• System Architecture: Systems architects define the architecture of a computerized system (i.e., a system composed of software and hardware) in order to fulfill certain requirements. Such definitions include: a breakdown of the system into components, the component interactions and interfaces (including with the environment, especially the user), and the technologies and resources to be used in the design.
• System Design: System design is the process of defining the architecture, modules, interfaces, and data for a system to satisfy specified requirements.
• Systems Engineering: Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design and manage complex systems over their life cycles.
• Software Development: Software development is the process of computer programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications and frameworks resulting in a software product.
• Java: Java is a set of computer software and specifications developed by Sun Microsystems, which was later acquired by the Oracle Corporation, that provides a system for developing application software and deploying it in a cross-platform computing environment.

Distinguishing Skills

Any Systems Architect that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• Systems Development: Systems development is the process of defining, designing, testing, and implementing a new software application or program.
• Scalability Design: Working experience of Scalability Design. Scalability is the capability of a system, network, or process to handle a growing amount of work, or its potential to be enlarged to accommodate that growth.
• Solution Architecture: Solution architecture is a practice of defining and describing an architecture of a system delivered in context of a specific solution and as such it may encompass description of an entire system or only its specific parts.
• Virtualization: Working experience of Virtualization. Virtualization is the process of creating a software-based, or virtual, representation of something, such as virtual applications, servers, storage and networks.
• Hardware Experience: Experience developing hardware that provides a user-friendly experience, allowing the user to interact with the software or hardware in a natural and intuitive way.

Salary Boosting Skills

A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills:

• Digital Signal Processing (DSP): Digital signal processing (DSP) is the use of digital processing, such as by computers, to perform a wide variety of signal processing operations.
• Application Design: Software Application Design involves gathering and analyzing the customer business functions, then designing an application solution to meet the prioritized business requirements.

Experience

This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.

Common Job Titles

It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:

• Systems Architect
• Senior Systems Architect
• Systems Design Engineer
• Pega Senior Systems Architect
• Pega Lead Systems Architect

Similar Occupations

If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles:

• Systems Engineer
• Systems Integration Engineer / Specialist
• Network Engineer / Architect
• Systems Analyst