What Does An IT Solution Architect Do?

WHAT DOES AN IT SOLUTION ARCHITECT DO?

Published: Oct 24, 2025 - The Information Technology (IT) Solution Architect evaluates current technologies to improve system performance and align solutions with business needs. This role creates technology roadmaps, mentors engineers, and collaborates with project teams to ensure successful implementation. The architect also defines technical requirements and promotes best practices in the software architecture companywide.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for IT Solution Architect

1. IT Solution Architect Duties

Digital Strategy: Participate in the creation of a holistic vision/strategy for how IT will help deliver digital business value drivers.
Mobile Architecture: Define Digital IT Mobile Application roadmaps, lead technical solution design efforts and provide senior-level expertise on decisions and priorities regarding the Digital IT Mobile Application technical architecture and interconnections to other Digital and non-digital IT ERP systems.
Best Practices: Capture and promote best practices, make proposals for landscape improvement, aiming for the robustness, availability, scalability, performance and efficiency of Digital IT Mobile Application solutions.
Technology Standards: Facilitate the establishment and implementation of standards and guidelines that guide the design of technology solutions, including architecting and implementing solutions requiring integration of multiple platforms, operating systems and applications related to Mobile Application.
System Design: Review, advise and design standard software and hardware builds, system options, risks, costs versus benefits and impacts on the business processes and goals.
Integration Framework: Develop and document the framework for integration and implementation of changes to technical standards.
Technical Documentation: Ensure that technical design documentation is completed to a high standard.
Team Coordination: Coordinate technical teams from different domains, provide consultancy and technical guidance to projects to deliver key business value.
Industry Trends: Track retail industry trends and maintain knowledge of new technologies to better serve the Digital IT architecture needs.
Innovation Design: Based on industry trends and standards, proactively propose innovative solutions to support the business requirements and strategy.

2. IT Solution Architect Details

Solution Architecture: Perform solution architectural analysis, including assessment of scenarios, definition of solution architectures in accordance with the Agency’s modeling conventions and compliant with its IT standards.
Use Case Analysis: Perform use case analysis and impact analysis.
Software Architecture: Definition of software and data architectures, satisfying the requirements in scope.
Proof of Concept: Design and conduct architectural proofs-of-concept and prototypes.
UI Design: Design of the user interface.
Implementation Modeling: Define the structuring of the solution implementation model.
Code Review: Conduct architecture and code reviews.
Technical Documentation: Production of the relevant technical documentation, such as solution designs, data modeling and documentation for development, operations and support teams.
Work Estimation: Estimation and prioritization of work packages and project plans.
Development Methodology: Definition and maintenance of a software development methodology, including standards and quality aspects.
Stakeholder Communication: Prepare and deliver formal presentations to the relevant stakeholders.
Business Interaction: Interact at executive, team and business levels.
Team Collaboration: Liaise with different technical teams, such as system administrators, testers and support, understanding their requirements.

3. IT Solution Architect Responsibilities

Business Alignment: Align the customer's business needs with the native application functionality and construct a development plan that will deliver the desired solution.
Process Knowledge: Acquire and maintain a deep knowledge of the core business processes and best practices in the cooperative utility industry, enhanced by understanding the specific business drivers for programs.
Stakeholder Collaboration: Build a collaborative and empathetic relationship with business stakeholders.
Requirement Translation: Work with internal fusion teams, vendors and developers, helping them convert business requirements into technical activities and verifying that their deliverables satisfy the acceptance criteria.
Innovation Management: Drive innovation and improvements into future releases of systems.
Technical Leadership: Provide technical leadership and expertise on system architecture, application design, implementation, and integration.
Department Relations: Maintain effective working relationships with other departments and individuals that Information Technology supports.
Change Advocacy: Act as a motivator, innovator, and champion in the promotion and adoption of new ideas, techniques, and technologies.
Solution Presentation: Prepare and deliver presentations related to the overall solution architecture.
Performance Metrics: Develop, track, and report on various metrics.
Safety Compliance: Comply with established safety and operating rules, procedures and guidelines, including reporting unsafe practices to a supervisor.
Security Compliance: Comply with established Information Security Handbook, policies, procedures, and guidelines, including reporting suspected information security incidents to Tech Support.

4. IT Solution Architect Job Summary

Technology Analysis: Analyze current technologies used within the company and determine ways to improve uptime and performance.
Business Requirements: Document and monitor business needs, requirements, and trends to provide technology solutions to solve business problems.
Technology Roadmap: Create technology roadmaps to align both new and legacy systems into a cohesive platform.
Software Mentorship: Work directly with developers and source code to mentor and model best practices in software architecture.
Engineer Training: Mentor and train other engineers throughout the company and seek to continually improve processes companywide.
Project Monitoring: Work alongside project management teams to successfully monitor progress and implementation of initiatives.
Solution Specification: Provide detailed specifications for proposed solutions.
Goal Management: Define clear goals for all aspects of a project and manage their proper execution.

5. Senior IT Solution Architect Accountabilities

System Specification: Develop high-level system specifications.
System Documentation: Assist in developing system documentation.
Test Planning: Assist in the preparation of the general test plan.
Professional Development: Participate in educational programs and professional societies involving supervisory skills, computing technology and systems methodologies.
Business Knowledge: Seek ways to expand business knowledge.
Employee Training: Conduct educational programs involving company personnel relating to computing technology and specific projects.
Architecture Standards: Create and maintain architecture, design and standards that are simply explained and well understood, on both the factory floor and by leadership.
OT-IT Integration: Enable an efficient and effective organization that removes barriers between traditional OT and IT roles.
Architecture Partnership: Be the architecture partner with plants and the Corporate IT organization to develop effective, low-cost and highly secure smart manufacturing systems.
Strategic Roadmap: Provide strategic direction, roadmap and standards within the area of responsibility.
Solution Expertise: Be the solution specifier, subject matter expert and keeper of the standards for automation solutions, manufacturing software and hardware.
Lifecycle Management: Manage life cycle of IT architecture for the plant and the enterprise.
Technology Innovation: Stay updated on new solutions and technologies, be innovative and bring new technology solutions to the business.
Relationship Management: Manage business relationships with local IT and controls engineers, external service providers, suppliers and partners.

6. IT Solution Architect Functions

Cloud Transformation: Transform the existing business application landscape into cloud native services.
Application Operations: Be responsible for the on-premise application operation and continuous improvement.
Technical Analysis: Analyze business needs, deriving possible technical solutions as well as evaluating different implementation and/or migration options.
Project Support: Support cross-functional project teams in describing requirements and processes, as well as in all IT/technology questions and interface definition to other applications.
Stakeholder Collaboration: Work closely and cooperatively with business process owners, IT specialists, and software suppliers, and may have other roles, e.g., product owner or (sub-) project manager.
Global Rollout: Support global rollouts and business adoptions for new applications and services.
User Training: Manage user and final software acceptance tests, and are responsible for user training.
Application Documentation: Be responsible for the application documentation and the handover to the IT service operation.
Implementation Standards: Set up guidelines and implementation standards in terms of the usage of (cloud) applications and services (computing capacity, connectivity, database services, and security policies).
Cloud Collaboration: Liaise with architects from cloud providers to learn and apply new cloud services to drive Schleich’s business application and digitalization roadmap.

7. IT Solution Architect Job Description

Domain Architecture: Business ownership and safeguarding of the strategic ERP EDM&AO Domain Architecture (DA) blueprint, covering design, development and maintenance.
Strategic Planning: Participate in the analysis, evaluation and development of enterprise long-term strategic and operating plans to ensure that the EA objectives are consistent with the enterprise’s long-term business objectives.
Architecture Alignment: Align understanding of Orange Group corporate recommendations on IT&N architectures, deriving them into local Orange Romania EA recommendations.
Technology Research: Research and analyze the technology environment based on technical and business requirements, reviewing and making strategic recommendations on new corporate or enterprise software applications or innovations from a perspective of concept, design, prototyping, build, integration, operation, and technical fit.
Development Standards: Produce and maintain ERP EDM&AO development practices, standards and procedures, and mentor or coach other development staff in these areas.
Technology Selection: Select the proper technology stack, participate in sourcing processes for technology and tools selection, and manage RFx sourcing for tools, solutions, systems, and implementations.
Compliance Assurance: Secure compliance with non-functional requirements such as security, performance, maintainability, scalability, usability, and reliability of a product.
Software Implementation: Design, develop, and implement software application solutions for other departments within committed turnaround times and with a sense of urgency.

8. IT Solution Architect Overview

Product Collaboration: Work in close collaboration with Product teams (PPO, Sales, Commercial, Onsite Support, and Technology) to reach the global product objectives (Growth) through realistic plans.
S&OP Management: Prepare, promote and animate the S&OP process review.
Customer Communication: Collaborate with Customer Engineering Teams and communicate proactively any challenges by category and any customer impact.
Process Alignment: Work closely with the Product Owner of the Storage and Distribution Platform and the Capacity Management and Performance teams to continuously align on processes and drive end-to-end initiatives to increase demand performance and reduce implementation costs.
Performance Management: Maintain full control and understanding of the performance results and action plan of the S&D Platform.
Tender Collaboration: Collaborate in the commercial tender calls from the S&D Platform.
Team Communication: Manage effective communication within the Contract Logistics Management team.
Team Facilitation: Facilitate teamwork and a collaborative mindset across the different stakeholders.
Demand Credibility: Build strong credibility of the Demand Planning team with Top Management.

9. IT Solution Architect Details and Accountabilities

Business Alignment: Drive business alignment to ensure the technical integrity, system quality, and fitness for the purpose of IT solutions support business goals and enterprise architecture governance.
Issue Management: Identify and raise issues, gaps, or misalignments.
Governance Oversight: Oversee existing enterprise architecture governance and actively contribute to the evolution of the framework, including defining architecture processes, deploying tools, standardizing information, and maintaining reusable patterns.
Stakeholder Engagement: Initiate and lead business and technical discussions with stakeholders, analyze requirements and design, and present and champion solutions that meet those requirements.
Outcome Evaluation: Ensure measurable business outcome-driven targets and evaluate business benefits after solution delivery.
Requirements Development: Work with business analysts, consultants, and design teams to develop system requirements across multiple subject areas focused on customer experience, order to cash, and employee experience.
Vendor Analysis: Initiate discussions with third parties, review and analyze their solutions, document architecture models, and make recommendations for adoption or partnership.
Industry Research: Monitor and analyze industry trends and best practices to define and implement standards and principles driving architecture within the Materials Group organization.
Technology Advocacy: Champion the introduction of new technologies or changes to existing business processes to solve business problems.
Technology Roadmap: Contribute to the development of a multi-year technology roadmap supporting business capability needs.

10. IT Solution Architect Tasks

Software Architecture: Design secure, resilient, scalable, and monitorable software architecture for core business systems, including internal applications deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or as SaaS.
Solution Validation: Present the solutions for validation to the architecture committee.
Architecture Documentation: Document the solutions using CMA CGM standard documents and applications, including PowerPoint slides, Word documents, and Mega Hopex referencing.
SME Support: Support the SMEs when they cannot themselves answer the project teams’ questions.
Quality Control: Control the quality of the delivered solutions to ensure compliance with the designed architecture.
Task Management: Ensure that the tasks are up-to-date in the company’s task monitoring systems (Orchestra and Planner).
Technology Awareness: Maintain high technological awareness to ensure solutions leverage the latest innovations.
Technology Roadmap: Contribute to the definition of the company’s technology roadmap, standards, and patterns.
Community Participation: Participate actively in the architect community’s activities and initiatives.

11. IT Solution Architect Roles

Business Partnership: Partner with the business to understand context, trends, and strategy impacts on enterprise technology, application, and information strategies.
Strategic Awareness: Maintain in-depth knowledge of the organization’s strategic business plans.
System Roadmap: Ensure system health is communicated and a roadmap aligns strategies with the IT investment plan.
Architectural Consulting: Provide infrastructure architectural consulting expertise, direction, and assistance to Business Relationship Managers, Systems Analysts, Engineers, and Architects.
Architecture Documentation: Document and develop in-depth knowledge of existing IT architecture, infrastructure, and technology portfolio.
Technology Standards: Develop, document, communicate, and enforce technology standards.
Technology Research: Research emerging technologies to support infrastructure and development efforts and recommend cost-effective, flexible solutions.
Infrastructure Planning: Develop, document, and communicate IT infrastructure investment plans, including cost reduction analysis.
Performance Testing: Develop test plans to assess infrastructure and system performance, report findings, and recommend improvements.
Requirement Definition: Collaborate with end users and senior management to define business requirements for complex systems development and gain buy-in for all technology, application, and infrastructure plans.
Project Compliance: Review IT projects, system designs, and procurement or outsourcing plans for compliance with standards and architectural plans.
Technology Strategy: Work across IT to develop a strategy and roadmap for Brink’s technology, application, and information needs.
Vendor Management: Interface with vendors and service providers to identify and select products and services that best support Brink’s strategies.
Architecture Governance: Participate in corporate architecture discussions and decisions, including product choices and implementation plans.
Team Leadership: Demonstrate cross-functional collaboration and leadership across a large, matrixed organization.

12. IT Solution Architect Additional Details

Architectural Strategy: Engage with division leaders, end-users, analysts, SMEs, and IT leadership to define optimized architectural strategies based on business priorities.
Solution Design: Drive the analysis and architectural design for key division programs.
Cross-Functional Coordination: Coordinate with IT corporate leaders across areas such as master data management, revenue management, security, infrastructure, remote systems, Salesforce, and SAP.
Application Implementation: Lead or support the rollout and implementation of new business applications and functionality across the division.
Business Translation: Translate business goals into architectural solutions, assessing the feasibility and practicality of design choices.
Cost Analysis: Participate in the development of cost/benefit analyses.
Solution Recommendation: Recommend application implementations that meet business capability requirements by evaluating both existing and new solutions.
Work Planning: Conduct work effort estimation and develop detailed work plans.

13. IT Solution Architect Essential Functions

Stakeholder Communication: Explain complex solutions and their value to NMD and corporate stakeholders.
Team Mentorship: Guide and mentor team members on solution architecture approaches and methods.
Project Adherence: Follow project plans, tasks, and deliverables to ensure alignment with objectives.
Dependency Management: Identify dependencies and resource requirements for project execution.
Status Reporting: Communicate project status effectively, escalate issues, and manage timelines and action items.
Development Collaboration: Work closely with the development team to ensure timely delivery aligned with chosen architectural approaches.
Architecture Improvement: Identify opportunities for architecture enhancements and drive discussions on cost, benefit, and prioritization within NMD.
Proof of Concept: Develop proof of concepts to validate and demonstrate proposed technical solutions.
Relationship Building: Develop and maintain strong working relationships with diverse business, functional, and technical leaders and teams.

14. IT Solution Architect Role Purpose

Architecture Alignment: Provide guidance to ensure new solutions fit into the IT architecture, align with IT strategy, and are globally standardized.
System Selection: Support the architectural aspects of identifying and selecting IT systems to meet SBU/SU function needs.
Technical Blueprinting: Design technical blueprints detailing software architecture, integration design, and data flows.
Architecture Support: Support initiatives by clarifying strategic architecture guidelines for interoperability, performance, scalability, reliability, availability, lifecycle stage, and technological risks.
Application Analysis: Assist stakeholders in analyzing applications that may require changes ranging from deployment strategy adjustments to complete replacements at the end of their lifecycle.
Guideline Development: Support the application architecture manager in creating solution architecture guidelines.
Enterprise Collaboration: Collaborate with Enterprise Technology Architects in integration, data, security, and infrastructure to ensure alignment with enterprise-wide standards.
Architecture Governance: Participate in the EA Review Board and Architecture sessions as directed by the Chief Architect, providing implementation governance and escalating issues when necessary.
State Assessment: Assess the current state of enterprise architecture and develop long-term future states that support IT strategy and enhance EA maturity.
Project Oversight: Provide architectural oversight and guidance to enterprise services and business unit projects.
Solution Leadership: Lead and coordinate projects from a solution architecture perspective, ensuring development aligns with accepted standards.
EA Compliance: Leverage existing enterprise architecture assets and ensure compliance with the target EA roadmap.

15. IT Solution Architect General Responsibilities

Platform Design: Provide expert guidance to create a banking platform design using a combination of FIS products, COTS products, and third-party solutions.
Design Leadership: Lead design efforts, communicate architectural concepts in appropriate formats for each stakeholder group, and present solutions to both technical and business audiences.
Architecture Modeling: Create and maintain design artifacts using the ArchiMate format and align with the TOGAF framework.
Technical Oversight: Influence technical decisions on key projects to ensure delivery of agreed objectives within scope.
Architecture Documentation: Document and publish architecture principles, standards, position papers, blueprints, best practices, patterns, and frameworks.
Design Governance: Act as the tie breaker on design decisions to maintain architectural consistency.
End-to-End Ownership: Own and maintain the design for the complete platform, covering UI assets, integration and API layers, back-end/core services, and data storage and processing layers.
Stakeholder Collaboration: Develop close partnerships and collaborations with business stakeholders and external IT teams.
Architecture Alignment: Ensure solution architecture collaboration and alignment across multiple project teams.

16. IT Solution Architect Key Accountabilities

Technology Advisory: Advise and guide clients on technology capabilities mapped to business requirements.
Technical Roadmapping: Participate in the creation of technical roadmaps to achieve strategic technical targets.
Requirement Analysis: Work with stakeholders and business analysts to understand and influence business requirements behind solutions.
Technical Targeting: Establish strategic technical targets for business capabilities and functionality.
Architecture Standards: Develop and maintain architecture standards through an architecture committee.
Strategic Collaboration: Collaborate with analysts and business architects to create projects that align with the strategic vision.
Project Review: Conduct project reviews to ensure compliance with architecture standards, roadmaps, templates, guidelines, and solutions.
Architecture Principles: Define solution architecture principles within a given domain and ensure adherence during new solution design or modification.
Domain Expertise: Build and maintain in-depth expertise on how the physical data model translates to business processes and insights within the domain.

17. IT Solution Architect Roles and Details

Technical Liaison: Act as the primary technical liaison between project managers, key users, partners, suppliers, the SAP Core Competence Center, and external business stakeholders.
Architecture Evaluation: Identify architectural questions and concerns, collaborate with stakeholders to develop and evaluate solutions based on cost, feasibility, business value, and constraints, and present clear recommendations to business and IT management.
Business Alignment: Understand business drivers and capabilities (current and future state) to define enterprise system designs and change requirements supporting targeted business outcomes.
Architecture Management: Manage and develop all aspects of architecture—integration, data, application, security, and infrastructure—across multiple projects, coordinating closely with analysts, partners, and suppliers.
Technology Insight: Stay informed on technology trends and their practical applications to enable new and evolving business and operating models.
Impact Assessment: Identify organizational and financial impacts of architectural solutions, including changes in skills, processes, structures, or culture.
Architecture Documentation: Document all solution architecture design and analysis work to ensure traceability and supportability.
Solution Optimization: Review and optimize architectural designs with a focus on efficient communication and data exchange.
Cross-Domain Collaboration: Collaborate across interdisciplinary teams to clarify and resolve cross-domain architectural issues.

18. IT Solution Architect Responsibilities and Key Tasks

Business Integration: Understand how all parts of the business model work together, including processes, operating systems, and application architectures.
Solution Design: Analyze business processes to design specific solutions that best fit the environment.
Pipeline Enablement: Enable the CI/CD pipeline through proper design guidelines and advocacy for necessary investments.
Solution Definition: Collaborate with customers and stakeholders to establish high-level solutions, including information models and documentation requirements.
Product Delivery: Support teams in developing products on time and ensuring they effectively address the intended problems.
Non-Functional Analysis: Analyze non-functional requirements such as security, performance, maintainability, scalability, usability, and reliability.
Client Expectations: Determine and confirm client business expectations and needs.
Infrastructure Design: Understand client requirements and design the appropriate technical infrastructure.
Application Architecture: Design technology and application architectures aligned with business goals.
System Documentation: Convert system requirements into software architecture and design documentation, ensuring completeness and consistency.
Resource Management: Collaborate with the Project Manager and customers to manage and negotiate resources, scope, and schedule.
Module Coordination: Interface and coordinate tasks with Module Leaders to ensure smooth progress and seamless module integration.

19. IT Solution Architect Duties and Roles

Consulting Services: Execute billable consulting engagements, solution design, and lead the deployment and adoption of technology solutions.
Client Engagement: Collaborate with Sales Account Executives and Practice Leads to manage client engagements, including assessments, architectural design sessions, proofs of concept, documentation, and post-implementation deliverables.
Solution Proposal: Work closely with Insight sales teams and vendor partners to define, select, and propose solutions based on client business needs.
Pre-Sales Expertise: Provide pre-sales technical guidance on data center, infrastructure, security, cloud connectivity, and virtualization solutions.
Cloud Migration: Drive the deployment, upgrade, and migration of client workloads into hybrid or public cloud environments, offering recommendations to overcome infrastructure-specific challenges.
Stakeholder Relationships: Establish and maintain deep relationships with key IT and business decision makers.
Prototype Development: Develop innovative web-based prototypes and insurance solutions by translating client requirements into functional specifications and application features.
Technical Implementation: Design, implement, deploy, and integrate applications, web, and API-based data analytical solutions forming the backbone of client offerings.
Agile Coaching: Coach agile development teams, providing architectural guidance and decision-making support during landscape transformations.
Marketing Advisory: Advise stakeholders and marketing teams on the capabilities and potential of marketing automation solutions.
Cross-Department Collaboration: Cooperate with multiple departments and work across diverse technologies to ensure cohesive solution delivery.

20. IT Solution Architect Job Summary

Architecture Management: Manage and develop architecture across a broad range of projects, collaborating with delivery teams responsible for individual project designs.
System Solutions: Provide management and system solutions for large, complex development projects involving multiple platforms, distributed processing, and web-based applications, ensuring enterprise alignment.
Architecture Roadmap: Develop a roadmap guiding the evolution of enterprise assets within the portfolio from current to future state.
Design Review: Review and ensure major architectural designs are consistent, maintainable, flexible, and aligned with business strategy.
Technical Innovation: Influence the adoption of new techniques and best practices, advocating for continuous improvement.
Architecture Documentation: Document all solution architecture, design, and analysis work thoroughly.
Business Understanding: Understand business goals, objectives, and needs within the solution environment.
Software Design: Develop software designs, IT solutions, and service components that support business applications.
Architecture Validation: Validate IT solution architectures against business requirements and assumptions, setting priorities accordingly.
Process Alignment: Contribute to and support the planning, budgeting, and design of business processes aligned with IT solution architecture.
Testing Coordination: Coordinate unit and integration testing activities, ensuring documentation of the IT solution architecture.

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