Software architect

What does a software architect do?

A software architect decides how software systems are structured so they meet business needs.

You set the design patterns, standards and integration approaches that development teams follow. You also check that what teams build matches the plan.

In Singapore, software architects sit in banks, government agencies, technology firms, telcos and large product companies. They usually report to a head of engineering, a chief architect or the chief technology officer. The role sits between enterprise architecture and the engineering teams.

You work with software engineers, product managers, security and infrastructure teams, and business stakeholders. You also work with enterprise and solutions architects, who set wider direction across the organisation.

What the work involves

• Turn business needs into architecture requirements and check that they fit the organisation's IT strategy.
• Design how systems connect, including APIs, services and shared platforms across teams.
• Review team designs against agreed standards and approve, adjust or reject proposed exceptions.
• Analyse the current architecture for weak points and propose changes, such as a move to the cloud or a split into services.
• Write guidelines, standard patterns and configurations that teams reuse.
• Assess new technologies and give senior management clear recommendations.

Pay in Singapore

Back to top

Skills a software architect needs

Back to top

Software architect job description

We are hiring a software architect to design and govern the software systems behind our products and services.

You will turn business needs into clear technical designs and set standards for our engineering teams. You will also guide the move from current systems to the target design. You will work closely with engineers, product owners, security and infrastructure teams.

Responsibilities

• Define software architecture that meets business, performance, security and cost needs.
• Gather architecture requirements and align them with the organisation's IT strategy.
• Plan the steps and sequence for moving from current systems to the target design.
• Design integration between systems that cross team and business lines.
• Write and maintain software development guidelines, patterns and standard configurations.
• Run architecture reviews and track whether teams follow agreed standards.
• Decide on exceptions to standards and record the reasons.
• Review the existing architecture for weaknesses and propose improvements.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and present recommendations to senior management.
• Coach engineers on design, trade-offs and technical decision-making.

Requirements

• Degree in computer science, software engineering, information systems or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Typically 8 to 12 years in software development, with several years leading designs for large systems.
• Strong grounding in system design, microservices, API design and distributed systems.
• Hands-on experience with at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure or Google Cloud) and with Kubernetes.
• Ability to explain design choices to engineers and non-technical stakeholders in writing and in person.
• Familiarity with AI coding assistants and the review practices they require is increasingly asked for.

Back to top

Software architect career path

Most software architects begin as engineers and move up through senior design work.

From the architect role you can go deeper into enterprise architecture or into engineering leadership.

1. Software engineer

   Entry

   You build and test features, learn the codebase and start to contribute to design discussions.

2. Senior software engineer

   Mid

   You own the design of larger components, review others' code and guide junior engineers.

3. Software architect

   Senior · SkillsFuture title

   You set software architecture and standards, govern designs across teams and advise on technology choices.

4. Principal or enterprise architect

   Lead

   You shape architecture strategy across many systems and business units and settle major design disputes.

5. Chief technology officer

   Head

   You are accountable for the organisation's technology direction, teams and investment.

Steps marked "SkillsFuture title" follow the career pathway in the SkillsFuture Skills Framework. The others are titles commonly used in Singapore.

Related jobs and their pay

Back to top

Software architect interview questions

We wrote these questions from the skills this job needs. They are not an official question bank.

1. Design the order system for a Singapore online retailer that must handle a sudden traffic spike during a big sale.

   What a good answer covers

   • Clarifies expected load, latency targets and what must never fail, such as payment
   • Separates read-heavy browsing from write-heavy checkout and scales each on its own
   • Uses queues or buffering to absorb peaks and caching for product pages
   • Plans for stock accuracy, retries and idempotent order creation
   • Names what to monitor and how to test the design under load

2. When would you split a monolith into microservices, and when would you leave it alone?

   What a good answer covers

   • Ties the split to clear causes, such as team independence, scaling needs or release conflicts
   • Warns about added cost: network calls, data consistency, monitoring and operations
   • Describes finding service boundaries from business domains
   • Suggests a gradual approach, such as extracting one module first
   • Accepts that a well-structured monolith is often the right answer

3. How do you keep data consistent when one business action touches several services?

   What a good answer covers

   • Explains why distributed transactions are hard and often avoided
   • Describes patterns such as sagas, the outbox pattern and compensating actions
   • Uses idempotent operations so retries are safe
   • Decides where eventual consistency is acceptable and where it is not
   • Covers monitoring for stuck or failed flows

4. A partner bank will call your API. How do you design it so that you can change it later without breaking them?

   What a good answer covers

   • Treats the API as a contract, written and agreed before build
   • Uses versioning and backward-compatible changes by default
   • Plans authentication, rate limits and clear error responses
   • Provides test environments and documentation for the partner
   • Sets a deprecation process with notice periods

5. Your teams run on Kubernetes. Which decisions belong to you as architect, and which to the platform team?

   What a good answer covers

   • Architect sets patterns: service boundaries, resilience, deployment and data standards
   • Platform team owns cluster operations, upgrades and shared tooling
   • Agrees standard configurations teams can reuse
   • Defines when a workload should not run on Kubernetes
   • Keeps a clear channel to resolve overlaps

6. How would you choose between managed cloud services and running software yourselves?

   What a good answer covers

   • Compares total cost, including staff time, not only service fees
   • Weighs control, portability and risk of vendor lock-in
   • Considers security, compliance and support needs
   • Checks team skills and operational maturity
   • Describes recording the decision and its review trigger

7. How do you capture non-functional requirements such as availability and performance, and check the design meets them?

   What a good answer covers

   • Asks stakeholders for measurable targets, not adjectives
   • Turns targets into design choices, such as redundancy and caching
   • Identifies the trade-offs between cost, speed and resilience
   • Plans load, failover and security tests before launch
   • Reviews the results against targets after release

8. What goes into an architecture decision record, and how do you run governance without slowing teams down?

   What a good answer covers

   • Records context, options considered, decision and consequences
   • Keeps standards short and reviews them regularly
   • Uses lightweight reviews for low-risk changes and deeper ones for risky changes
   • Sets a clear process for exceptions and who approves them
   • Tracks adherence with automated checks where possible

1. The team wants to rewrite a ten-year-old core system from scratch. How do you decide?

   What a good answer covers

   • Asks what problem the rewrite solves and what the current system still does well
   • Maps risks, cost and the business impact of running two systems
   • Considers incremental replacement of parts over a full rewrite
   • Defines the transition steps and success measures
   • Takes the recommendation to management without jargon

2. Two product teams both want to own a shared customer service and refuse to compromise. What do you do?

   What a good answer covers

   • Listens to each team's needs and constraints
   • Looks at the domain to see where the boundary should sit
   • Proposes options with clear trade-offs and ownership rules
   • Involves their managers if needed and agrees a decision date
   • Documents the outcome so the dispute does not return

3. A production outage traces back to a design you approved. How do you respond?

   What a good answer covers

   • Helps restore service first and shares facts openly
   • Takes ownership without blaming the team
   • Runs a blameless review to find the design gap
   • Updates standards or review checklists based on the finding
   • Communicates the fix and lessons to other teams

4. Engineers are using Claude Code to generate large amounts of code, and some of it ignores your standards. What do you change?

   What a good answer covers

   • Sets clear patterns and examples the tool and the engineers can follow
   • Keeps human review for design, security and data handling
   • Adds automated checks, such as linting, tests and dependency scans
   • Defines what data may and may not be shared with the tool
   • Collects feedback from teams and adjusts the guidance

1. Tell us about a time you persuaded senior engineers to change a design when you had no authority over them.

   What a good answer covers

   • Describes the situation and the disagreement concisely
   • Shows use of evidence, such as prototypes or measurements
   • Listens to their concerns and adjusts the proposal
   • States the outcome and what changed
   • Reflects on what you would do differently

2. Describe a time you said no to a business request because of an architecture risk.

   What a good answer covers

   • Explains the request and the specific risk, in business terms
   • Offers an alternative or a phased option
   • Shows how you kept the relationship constructive
   • Gives the result and what was learned

1. You are designing a system that stores customer personal data. How do the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) and its obligations shape your design?

   What a good answer covers

   • Limits collection to what is needed and records the purpose
   • Designs for consent, access and correction requests
   • Applies access controls, encryption and protection against breaches
   • Plans retention and deletion rules
   • Sets up a way to detect and report data breaches, and checks current PDPA requirements with the legal team

Common questions about a software architect job

Sources