Architecture: Relationship With Staff Engineers and Scaling Architecture

I've seen my share of organizations struggle with defining and implementing effective architecture roles, especially in regards to defining the distinctions between architects and staff engineers. In this post, I'll discuss my thoughts, based on real-world experience and patterns I've seen succeed (and fail).

The Roles

Let's start with three key roles that I'll be discussing:

1. Enterprise Architects
2. Staff Engineers
3. Engineering Directors

Each plays a crucial role, but their effectiveness depends entirely on how well they work together. Here's how I visualize the roles:

Notice how Enterprise Architecture is a separate organization from whatever specific engineering (data, application, etc) org. I'll explain that in a bit.

Enterprise Architect: Strategy

An Enterprise Architect role is responsible the technical vision and standards for the organization. You could think of them as the city planners for your technical landscape - they're not designing specifics about individual buildings, but rather establishing the zoning laws and infrastructure that make everything work together.

Key Responsibilities:

• Developing technology strategy aligned with business objectives
• Establishing architectural patterns and frameworks
• Setting standards for security, scalability, and interoperability
• Analyzing industry trends and adjusting standards accordingly
• Consulting on complex technical challenges

Something critical that seems to always get lost in this: Enterprise Architects need to stay connected to reality. It's easy to get caught up in high-level strategy and forget about the day-to-day challenges the teams face. Staying close to the teams and their solutions is key but in reality, this is alway a very difficult challenge.

Staff Engineer: The Technical Bridge

If Enterprise Architects are city planners, Staff Engineers are the architects designing individual buildings. They take the standards and vision from Enterprise Architecture and turn them into practical solutions.

Key Responsibilities:

• Designing cross-domain solutions
• Ensuring compliance with enterprise standards
• Leading technical designs and their reviews
• Identifying and evaluating new technologies
• Maintaining development templates and standards

Engineering Director: The Team Builder

The Engineering Director role excels by focusing on the people and delivery aspects. They ensure we have the right teams, skills, and processes to deliver on our technical vision.

Key Responsibilities:

• Building and managing engineering teams
• Setting engineering practices and standards
• Driving delivery excellence
• Balancing technical debt with business needs
• Fostering engineering culture

The Engagement Model

Here's where things get interesting - and where I've seen many organizations stumble. The key to making this structure work is understanding that Staff Engineers have a "dotted line" relationship with Enterprise Architecture, even though they typically report to Engineering Directors.

Scaling the Architecture Organization

One question I get asked a lot is "How do we scale this model?" The key is leveraging Staff Engineers and Engineering Directors as your first line of architecture within their domains.

An example organization for some area, domain, etc would look like this:

Best Practices for Scaling:

• Align Enterprise Architects with specific business domains
• Establish regular sync meetings between EA, Staff Engineers, and ED roles
• Create clear channels for architectural decisions and escalations
• Document and share architectural decisions across domains
• Build communities of practice around key technologies

For example, scaling could be visualized as such, where there are multiple business domains in need of support:

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

1. The Ivory Tower Syndrome
   Enterprise Architecture becomes disconnected from day-to-day realities. Solution: Regular hands-on involvement with teams and projects.
2. The Bottleneck Effect
   Everything needs EA approval, slowing down delivery. Solution: Clear delegation of decision-making authority to Staff Engineers and Directors.
3. The Standards Overload
   Too many standards and guidelines, making compliance impossible. Solution: Focus on critical standards that provide real value.
4. The Communication Gap
   Lack of clear communication channels between roles. Solution: Regular sync meetings and clear documentation of decisions.

Wrapping Up

Creating an effective architecture organization isn't just about defining roles - it's about creating a structure that enables teams to deliver value while maintaining technical excellence. The model I've outlined here has evolved through years of real-world experience, but remember: every organization is different. Use this as a starting point and adapt it to your specific needs and culture.

What's your experience with architecture organizations? Have you seen different models work well? Drop a comment below - I'd love to hear your thoughts!