What Makes for a Senior Engineer? An Architect?

At larger, more established companies an architect is typically a highly experienced engineer who has distinguished himself/herself during at least 15-20 years of work experience. At other companies, typically smaller, younger ones, the architects may be engineers in their 20s who developed the original systems, however good or bad those systems might be.

So obviously you cannot compare a 45 year old architect with a PhD who has worked at six companies to a 23-year old architect who wrote the first version of their company’s website using Perl and SQLite. The first architect is likely to have a wide breadth of experience in a variety of technologies and design approaches; the second architect will likely have superb in-depth knowledge of how his company’s site operates and the tweaks needed to keep it healthy. Both skillsets are important, but they are not equally transferable.

The same issues apply to the title “Senior Engineer”. An engineer may achieve that title through many years of experience, or because they just happen to be among the most senior members of a very young team. In both cases they are likely relied upon to provide leadership for the more junior engineers, which may be more important than the actual number of years they’ve been working. Still, giving a “Senior Engineer” title to an engineer with 2 years experience is somewhat of a silly game.

The bottom line? Do not place too much weight on titles. An architect or senior engineer at one company may have less experience than a junior engineer at another firm. Just remember that titles are relative, and a fancy-pants architect at one company may flounder at another company. It’s kind of like how someone who skis black diamond runs in the Midwest might get themselves in way over their head trying to do the same in Colorado.