Techlids and architects

autumn 2020 The year on ArchDays. told How we at Tinkoff make architectural decisions. It’s been a long time since then, and now we can say for sure that we do write architectural documents for big decisions and discuss them in advance. And the results of the discussion are usually recorded in some log of architectural solutions. Each large unit has its own process for maintaining such documentation, which is similar in general but may differ in detail. Usually the most active in the field of creation, elaboration and revision of such architectural documentation are engineers of high grades. These engineers have some very strong archetypes, among which I want to talk today about the techlids and architects. These archetypes are well described in the book "Staff Engineer" by Wil Larson. (here my brief sammari books). But if we talk about these archetypes in our own words, Techlids usually work within a single domain with one manager and one or two teams. At Tinkoff, these guys help improve the engineering metrics of the services the team is responsible for. (MTTR, level of automation of testing and depletion, indicators of SLA services and so on). Architects usually work outside the same team and help drive architectural processes and complex cross-team projects. In Tinkoff, it can be the creation of a new product, complex migration, redesigning an old product to meet regulatory requirements and compliance.

Usually in both these archetypes grow engineers who have passed fire, water and copper pipes and eventually grew to the Senior level. And then at some point, they realized that they wanted more complexity and more impact on the outcome, and they were willing to take more responsibility for that. At this point, they usually have the opportunity to try themselves in one of these two roles, and then after a couple of years of successful work, you can be nominated for the next level in the form of Staff Engineer, which Tinkoff also has:)

By the way, there is a path to the branch of architects through the branch of system analysts, but this path is still experimental and contains the following steps: Preparation of an application with architectural artifacts that were performed as part of work duties (It's like I told you. this report part about the T-Rost process) Two interviews: a system design interview and an interview about architecture and development processes, where we discuss what modern development processes look like, how to build architectural processes in the unit, and how to lead large projects as an architect

#Engineering #Management #Software #SoftwareArchitecture #Architecture #Architect