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🧭 Software Architecture Roadmap

This roadmap outlines the essential skills, technologies, and principles required to grow into a proficient Software Architect. It covers both technical and strategic areas across modern software systems.

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1. 🧠 Core Programming & Engineering Foundations

• Master 1–2 languages deeply:
  • PHP, Java, Python, Go, TypeScript, Rust
• Understand language paradigms:
  • OOP, functional, reactive
• Software engineering fundamentals:
  • Data structures, algorithms, memory models, compilation

// Example: Master concurrency in Go
go func() { doWork() }()

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2. 🔧 Tooling & Engineering Infrastructure

• Git, GitHub/GitLab, branching strategies
• Build & CI/CD tools: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD
• Monitoring & Logging: ELK Stack, Prometheus, Grafana
• Static analysis: SonarQube, Checkstyle, ESLint
• Agile tools: Jira, Trello

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3. 💡 Software Design Principles

• Clean Code (Uncle Bob)
• SOLID, DRY, KISS, YAGNI
• Design Patterns (GoF): Factory, Strategy, Observer, etc.
• Test-Driven Development (TDD) & testing strategy
• Domain-Driven Design (DDD): Bounded contexts, aggregates
• Modeling with UML, C4 Diagrams, and Sequence Diagrams

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4. 🏗️ Architectural Patterns

• Layered Architecture
• Client-Server
• Microservices & Service Meshes
• Hexagonal Architecture (Ports & Adapters)
• Event-Driven Architecture
• Serverless Architecture
• Publish-Subscribe & Message Queues
• Monolith vs Modular Monolith vs Microservices

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5. 🏛️ Architectural Principles & Trade-offs

• CAP Theorem
• ACID vs BASE
• Eventual Consistency
• Idempotency
• CQRS & Event Sourcing
• Scalability, Availability, Reliability, Maintainability
• Coupling, Cohesion, and Connascence

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6. 🧱 Platforms, Infrastructure & Runtime Environments

• Containers & Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes
• Cloud Platforms: AWS, GCP, Azure
• Serverless Platforms: AWS Lambda, Cloud Functions
• Edge/CDN: Cloudflare, Akamai, Fastly
• API Gateways: Kong, NGINX, Envoy, AWS API Gateway
• CI/CD Pipelines, DevSecOps, IaC (Terraform, Pulumi)

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7. 🗃️ Data & Storage Systems

• SQL Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL
• NoSQL: MongoDB, Redis, Cassandra, DynamoDB
• NewSQL: CockroachDB, YugabyteDB
• Data Warehousing: Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift
• Data Streaming: Kafka, Pulsar
• File/Object Storage: S3, MinIO
• Data Modeling: ER modeling, normalization vs denormalization

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8. 🌐 Networking & Communication

• HTTP, REST, gRPC, WebSockets
• TCP/IP, UDP, DNS, TLS
• Load Balancing
• Service Discovery
• Consistent Hashing
• Rate Limiting
• Message Queues & Brokers: RabbitMQ, Kafka

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9. 🔐 Security Principles

• OAuth 2.0 & OpenID Connect
• JWT, API Keys, Session Tokens
• TLS/HTTPS, Encryption (AES, RSA, HMAC)
• Credential & Secret Management
• Zero Trust Architecture
• Input Validation, CSRF/XSS Prevention

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10. 📈 Observability & Performance

• Monitoring: Prometheus, CloudWatch
• Logging & Tracing: ELK Stack, Jaeger, OpenTelemetry
• Benchmarking: Locust, JMeter, k6
• Performance Profiling: flamegraphs, APMs
• SLA/SLO/SLI tracking

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11. 🧠 System Design & Scalability

• Horizontal vs Vertical Scaling
• Replication, Sharding, Partitioning
• Caching: Redis, CDN, local
• Load Balancing Strategies
• Failover & Disaster Recovery
• Backpressure & Circuit Breakers
• Distributed Consensus (Raft, Paxos)

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12. 🛡️ Governance, Compliance & Standards

• Software Licensing
• GDPR / HIPAA / SOC 2 / ISO 27001
• Data Residency
• Auditing, Logging, and Traceability

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13. 🤝 Non-Technical & Supporting Skills

• Decision-making under uncertainty
• Stakeholder communication
• Trade-off analysis
• Project estimation & planning
• Team collaboration & leadership
• Mentoring & technical vision

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✅ Final Thoughts

Becoming a software architect isn't just about learning technology—it's about thinking holistically, communicating effectively, and making informed trade-offs to create systems that are scalable, maintainable, and resilient.

Pick one pillar at a time and go deep before going broad. Track progress using self-projects, diagrams, interviews, and mentorship.

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📚 Suggested Reading

• Clean Architecture – Robert C. Martin
• Designing Data-Intensive Applications – Martin Kleppmann
• Software Architecture: The Hard Parts – Ford & Richards
• Domain-Driven Design – Eric Evans
• The Twelve-Factor App
• Awesome Software Architecture (GitHub)

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