What is an Enterprise Architect? Job Description & Salary
What Does an Enterprise Architect Do?
Enterprise architects offer the technology and applications roadmap. This in turn directs and boosts the organization’s reliance on standards for technology infrastructure. What is more, the enterprise architect job description involves ensuring that every single part of the flow of technology is identified and thus, both IT and IT-enabled operations run without showing any failure.
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When diving into more details of the technological infrastructure, it can be said that people ensure that all various sectors of the work in the structure. An enterprise architect is the one who is responsible and who needs to be decisive about the security, data, servers, and hardware, and thus he/she should have immense knowledge about each and every single perspective of the structure.
There is more than one way to become an enterprise architect. A person can begin from anywhere in the technology industry and have the main and ultimate goal for great versatility of fields of technology. The important thing is to know and be curious about other fields of the career course. It might be a difficult job since it needs both flexibility and consistency.
The Interest of Being an Enterprise Architect
Two important things of being a good EA are being able to work for long hours and being a responsible individual. Enterprise architects need to be able to predict and identify the paths which the organization should take to make sure that technological infrastructure is up to date. As for the companies which need more predictions, you might catch the opportunity to see new perspectives as you will work with the leading figure of technology.
Since EAs are required to have a high-level perspective and work at a high-level in an organization, it can be said that only 5% of companies have worthy Enterprise Architect roles. Since the job description of an Enterprise Architect practically results in general management of the department of IT, we can define the position under several different names.
Enterprise Architect Salary
It can be mentioned that the average salary for Enterprise Architect is annually $140,000. According to payscale statistics, it is around $135k in the United States. What is more, apart from that amount of salary, profit sharing and bonuses do exist. Companies usually hire full-time employees. This means that you will have a relatively secure job once you achieve a certain level. The greater range of Enterprise Architect Salary can be summaries between $103,000 and $190,000, where the maximum salary is usually earned close to the end of the career.
Enterprise Architect Skills
Apart from having deep technical knowledge, as an EA you should also have other significant skills in order to be successful in your career.
- Be motivational and positive – you are required to be able to cheer your team up with the correct motivation.
- Have nice communication – a successful EA has the ability to effectively interact with team members and make sure that all members in the team are aware of the current situation.
- Be a negotiator – since there are other people in other departments, your ideas might contradict with theirs.
- Be a problem solver – you need to be able to use all your technical knowledge to solve a certain problem in a good way, to be a successful EA.
- Comprehend the business and technology – you should understand both how business works and how various technologies can be used to make the business more efficient.
Expectations and Responsibilities
Usually, EAs have responsibilities on transformational programs throughout different portfolios as they manage and operate several numbers of various projects and meetings.
- Technology Life Cycles – identifies how different versions and adjustments can be integrated for several technologies.
- Portfolio Management – identifies the health and current status of the infrastructure of IT.
- Architecture Strategy – includes all perspectives of IT architecture strategy, like identifying the current state, required strategical path, and transition.
- Governance Committees – it is a committee that makes the decisions of the organizations based on protocols, standards, and policies.
- Architecture Review Boards – it is a simple meeting of people who gather together in order to discuss the current changes and architecture.
Paths for Being a Successful EA
In order to reach this position, EAs have taken many several paths. To be in this position, system admins, network managers, programmers, DBAs, and other product owners compete within themselves. It is never late for you to become an EA.
The most significant and efficient of beginning towards being a successful EA is to attend meetings, being a volunteer for the part of several committees and team leaders. In this way, you will have a chance of learning different perspectives of the technology. You should enhance your knowledge about IT and its details in order to comprehend the full business domain in which the organization work.
For example, in the case that you are a DBA, you can begin by learning about programming and the cloud. In this way, you will a nice background of how these companies and departments work. What is more, TOGAF, which is a certification that is globally recognized for the framework of Enterprise Architecture, can be used to decrease the time to reach the level of EA, and thus add a huge value to your career. To be a good and successful Enterprise Architect it is recommended to have consistent training which involves having a certification in ITIL Foundation, CISSP, PMP Certification, Big Data, Six Sigma Green Belt, Hadoop, etc. If you are looking for a job as Enterprise Architect, check Jooble!
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A dedicated Career Coach, Agile Trainer and certified Senior Portfolio and Project Management Professional and writer holding a bachelor’s degree in Structural Engineering and over 20 years of professional experience in Professional Development / Career Coaching, Portfolio/Program/Project Management, Construction Management, and Business Development. She is the Content Manager of ProjectCubicle.
An enterprise architect is responsible for making sure that a company’s business strategy uses proper technology systems architecture to achieve its goals… Enterprise architects have an enormous degree of responsibility !!!
Enterprise architecture is a way to understand how an organization works.