Software architect

A software architect is a software expert who makes high-level design choices and dictates technical standards, including software coding standards, tools, and platforms. The leading expert is referred to as the chief architect.

History

With the popularity of multi-tier application development extend this to a list to include even very recent trends, the choices of how an application can be built have also increased. Given that expansion, the risk that a software development project may inadvertently create a "new" end product that, in essence, already existed has grown markedly. A new 'software architect' role has become necessary during software development.

The software architect concept began to take hold when object-oriented programming (OOP) was coming into more widespread use (in the late 1990s and early years of the 21st century). OOP allowed ever-larger and more complex applications to be built, which in turn required increased high-level application and system oversight.