How to Become a Solutions Architect
$110K-$200K+ • Design technical solutions • Bridge business and tech • No coding required.
Solutions Architects design technical solutions for business problems. You meet with clients, map needs to products and architectures, and guide implementation teams. You need to understand how systems connect, not build them yourself. In 2026, you’re expected to understand AI/ML integration points and speak confidently about when and where AI adds value.
Entry paths include technical-adjacent roles (sales engineering, customer success, IT), cloud certifications (AWS or Azure Solutions Architect), and strong consulting and presentation skills. See our salary and role overview for more.
RAG Architecture Reference
Many Solutions Architect roles now involve retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and LLM-backed systems. Use the interactive diagram below to explore the indexing and query pipelines, recommended tools, and key trade-offs.
RAG Architecture Overview (Text Version)
Phase 1: Indexing Pipeline (runs once): Document Ingestion → Chunking + Parsing → Embedding Model → Vector Database.
Phase 2: Query Pipeline (runs per request): User Query → Semantic Search → Rerank (Optional) → LLM Generation → Grounded Response.
Key tools: LangChain, LlamaIndex, Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant, OpenAI, Cohere.