How To Become A Lead Architect: What It Is and Career Path

What is a lead architect and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted Experts

Brian Glas,

John Russo

Your duty as the lead architect is to manage the designing of private and state-owned structures. Your responsibility is extended to you drawing up and discussing budgets with clients, determining design specifications, and setting up contracts.

As the lead architect, it is also your responsibility to identify constraints in the design specifications that may reduce the life cycle of your structure. You are also required to revise the design specifications and make improvements that will result in the structure having a much longer life cycle. When bringing your thoroughly designed structure to life, it is your duty to select equipment and methodology that will ensure that your structure outlives its lifespan.

The skills required in order to be a formidable lead architect include strong imaginary, design, and creative skills. You also need to be highly organized, pay attention to detail, and have extensive knowledge of the built environment. In order to become a lead architect, you need to undertake a bachelor's degree in architecture and have enough experience in the field to become a lead architect.

What general advice would you give to a Lead Architect?

Brian Glas

Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Union University

Build relationships: Different technologies will interest and challenge you, but throughout your career, you'll find that it's the relationships that are the most important. This is harder to grasp earlier in your career, but much easier to understand after 15-20 years.
Gain different perspectives: Spend time with people in other roles that your job interacts with, and gain a solid understanding of how they view things; this is most valuable for career progression and understanding of how your work fits into the big picture.

ScoreLead ArchitectUS Average

Salary

7.7

Avg. Salary $104,687

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability Level

5.9

Growth Rate 21%

Growth Rate 0.3%

Diversity

4.1

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.51%

Asian 11.99%

Black or African American 6.24%

Hispanic or Latino 8.82%

Unknown 4.70%

White 67.73%

Gender

female 9.76%

male 90.24%

Age - 43

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 - 43

Stress Level

5.9

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity Level

8.3

Complexity Level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work Life Balance

5.3

Work Life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a lead architect

Explore lead architect education requirements

Most common lead architect degrees

Bachelor's

63.5 %

Master's

27.6 %

Associate

3.3 %

Start to develop specific lead architect skills

Skills	Percentages
Digital Transformation	13.02%
Architecture	9.68%
Java	7.42%
Cloud	5.88%
Infrastructure	4.22%

Complete relevant lead architect training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 3-6 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New lead architects 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 a lead architect based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real lead architect resumes.

Gain additional lead architect certifications

Lead architect certifications can show employers you have a baseline of knowledge expected for the position. Certifications can also make you a more competitive candidate. Even if employers don't require a specific lead architect certification, having one may help you stand out relative to other applicants.

The most common certifications for lead architects include Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF).

More About Certifications

Research lead architect duties and responsibilities

Provide insight and manage all technology relate aspects with presentations and communications at Sr. management and CxO level.
Hook up the JSP plugins with spring bind and JSTL tags in the HTML pages.
Work with Jenkins CI server.
Develop Linux user space C/C++/Python (Gstreamer, plugins) for multimedia.

Get lead architect experience

Prepare your lead architect resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your lead architect resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a lead architect resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose From 10+ Customizable Lead Architect Resume templates

Build a professional Lead Architect resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your Lead Architect resume.