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Only big companies will have the resources and need to hire someone who makes architectures and rarely gets their hands dirty. It sounds like you want to be an

Only big companies will have the resources and need to hire someone who makes architectures and rarely gets their hands dirty. It sounds like you want to be an architect that primarily designs big systems from the ground up. There just isn't a lot of need for this - the design is the beginning, and after the system is running it's about keeping it running and improving it. Plus a lot of these roles are internal hires from talent the CTO knows already, as there are so few of these positions and they need to be trusted. However this sounds like something FAANG companies have positions for. I just think they will be very limited and very hard to get.

jrockway 5y ago
This is really not true. Every software-focused startup that's ~30 people and growing need someone to guide the way for the less experienced engineers. Systems design is a part of every software engineer's career, but experience there can be pretty limited. (Most people try to simplify the field down to 1-person projects, because they started programming with 1-person projects. That very quickly fails to scale, and needing to make 15 1-person projects work together is a common demand.) So you need to learn it "on the job", and you need someone around to help. That's exactly the position that the OP is looking for, and looking around at job listings, it is quite in demand.