How to Interview a Solution Architect: Test the Decisions, Not the Diagrams

The short answer: Give the candidate a realistic business problem and ask them to explain constraints, options, trade-offs and the steps needed to make the solution deliverable. Strong architecture is as much about judgment as technical knowledge.

Many organisations use the word “architect” for different mandates. A solution architect typically designs a particular solution, an enterprise architect focuses on wider capability and standards, and an integration architect works deeply with systems interaction. Define the mandate before assessing candidates.

Establish decision authority

Clarify which standards already exist, who approves deviations, which teams implement the design and what the architect hands over. Responsibility without authority creates delivery friction.

Use a realistic scenario

Describe a legacy customer application, a new cloud-based service, a sensitive data set and two interfaces. Ask the candidate what they must learn before recommending architecture. Then explore integration, reliability, identity, observability, operating cost, data ownership and migration risk.

The best answers acknowledge uncertainty and propose validation activities rather than asserting one technology is always correct.

Test delivery involvement

Ask about a time an architecture design proved difficult to implement. What assumption failed? How did engineering and operations teams contribute? What changed? This helps distinguish architecture ownership from presentation-only involvement.

Evaluate communication across audiences

An architect must explain technical risk to delivery teams and commercial consequences to business decision-makers. Ask candidates to explain the same trade-off once to engineers and again to an executive sponsor.

Scorecard dimensions

• Architecture reasoning and option analysis
• Integration and non-functional requirements
• Security, resilience and operational practicality
• Stakeholder communication
• Evidence of delivery and adaptation

Do not turn the scorecard into a vendor certification contest. Choose weighting before interviewing and record the evidence behind each rating.

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