What do you think the role software architect does?

A software architect is a person who plans, designs and reviews the construction of software.

• Planning is the process of thinking about the activities required to achieve a desired goal.
• Design is the intentional creation of a plan or specification for the implementation of the goal above.
• Review is an evaluation of the software before production.

The way we define roles on our team, it includes system-level design (working out the details of how the pieces are deployed, what kinds of resources are needed, etc.) and coding the infrastructure plumbing.

This role develops code for other developers to consume so that they can focus on the features of the application, and less on all the tech integration details.

I should note that everyone is welcome to participate in the design, but not everyone is comfortable making the final choices and writing the code.

Hi! I can really recommend Design It! by Michael Keeling.