Solution/Principal Architect job role
Pros
As architect you'll work with both Business groups and technology groups. Provides a good opportunity to learn about banking products and many technologies. There's really no company wide standard definition of this role. Your role will be partly determined by your manager's perspective as well as your own skills and goals. Some architects focus on the details of technology (data mapping, configuration details of servers) and others work at a very high level (logical view of architecture). You'll work on technologies that range from mainframe and legacy applications, to vendor hosted and some cloud architectures. Most projects are run in a waterfall process, but the company is piloting some agile projects. Some projects will be feature upgrades to existing systems, perhaps to support new product offerings. Others will be system upgrades (vendor applications/hardware old and out of support and need to be replaced, such as moving to current operating systems or database version), and least often is greenfield development on new capabilities and infrastructure. Also some regulatory/compliance projects, which are necessary but not fun. Nothing unique here, and fairly typical of any very large company. Good work/life balance. It's not often I've had to work past 6p or on weekends. The exceptions are critical deadlines and disaster recovery tests which must be performed on weekends. It's not likely you'd have systems to DR test more than once or twice per year. That said, I encounter plenty of people who are workaholics and drag others into their patters. Depending on your manager, you may have generous work from home options. Some people are in the office every day, and others hardly ever come in. Work from home is viable since we're located in multiple buildings in RI and MA, but also use off shore teams. If no one you're working with is onsite and meetings are by phone, then no reason to be in the office. However, I find that a lot ad-hoc conversations happen by running into people in the halls and cafeteria so being in the office is useful.
Cons
There's no formal training for architects. You're expected to figure to how to informally pick up product/company/process knowledge, as well as architectural conventions (documents styles, uml diagramming styles), etc. To do well here you need to be someone who is a self starter, have attention to detail, and well organized. Salary is ok, but doesn't increase quickly. You won't get rich here. Processes are slow and complex. If you're expecting to complete projects and systems quickly and without overhead, this isn't the place for you. There's a lot of outsourcing/offshoring with the complexities that can accompany it. There are frequent reorgs. This contributes to my comment about about process.
