Top 7 Courses to Become a Software Architect or Solution Architect

Every Programmer wants to grow in their career, but it’s not easy, and if you don’t pay attention to your job, you will likely stay in the same
position for many years. The growth in the initial few years is
generally fast. Still, once you reach the barrier of 5 years, you need
to decide which direction you want to move like — people management,
product management, or software architecture.

For tech guys, who don’t want to go on people and product management,
the software architecture or solution architecture is the final position, which is not surprising.

If you want to be close with coding and technical discussions, like to try new technologies and want to use them in your organization to solve a challenging problem, software architecture is an excellent position to be in.

Most of the Java developers I have met or interacted with wanted to become a software architect, though only a few succeed, and most of them are still either a technical lead or Senior Software developer.

But, the big question is, how does a senior developer become a software architect? What books or courses you can look forward to learning the skills a Software or Solution architect should have? It’s also one of the most
common questions I receive from my reader, apart from how to prepare for Java interviews.

To help you with this question and to answer many such questions from my readers, I’ll share a few online courses you can take to learn more about Software Architecture and how to become a software architect.

In the past, I have shared a couple of books you can read to learn some software architecture and solution architecture skills, and these courses will supplement whatever you have learned from them. You can also use these courses and those books to get the best of both worlds.

Top 5 Courses to become Software Architect or Solution Architect

As I have said, a Software architect position is not a comfortable
position. The architect is responsible for all technology decisions in
the project and also a significant role.

You need to know a lot of things, not just the technology but also the business. You should not only be familiar with general software architecture, design, coding, and programming best practices,
but also with the latest technologies, libraries, and framework and
knows their pros and cons to choosing the right technology for your
solution.

In these few courses, I have tried to include most of the things you need to learn Software Architecture, but this list is by no means complete, and I am keen to get some suggestions from some of the experienced Software Architects which come across this article.


Anyway, without any further ado, here is my list of some of the best
online courses to learn Software Architecture and become a Solution
Architect or Software Architect.

1. How To Become An Outstanding Solution Architect

This is another excellent and must take the course for all the programmers
who aspire to become a software architect. In this course, instructor
Mark Farragher will teach you all the skills you need to become an
outstanding solution architect.

He will not only teach you how to create an excellent architecture design but also show you all the soft skills you will need to really shine in this role and make an impression on your peers. This is extremely important as you need to do a lot of talking and probably need to interact with most of the people in the organization, including CEO and CTO.

This course also covers how a Software Architect or Solution Architect operates in an IT team, which soft skills are required to become an outstanding architect, and which extra responsibilities you can take on to really make an impression on your peers.

Talking about technical skill, the course will teach you how to create high
architectures, explains common architecture design patterns, and shows
how to design these patterns in UML.

It also covers what to look at architecture, both high and low levels, like caching, exception management, and deployment scenarios. In short, an excellent course for all programmer and senior developer who wants to become a Solution Architect.

here is the link to join the course - How To Become An Outstanding Solution Architect

2. Web Application & Software Architecture 101

This is another excellent course from Educative to learn about Web
application architecture. In this course, you will learn about different
architectural styles like monolith, microservices, client-server,
3-tier architecture, decentralized peer-to-peer architecture, and how
request and data move in web application.

You will also learn about how to think big and think in terms of layers,
performance, scalability, and high availability, which is a must for
today’s application.

The course not only introduces with the different architectural pattern but
also explains the pros and cons of each approach and walk you through a
different scenario where a particular architecture is more suitable
than others.

Here is the link to join the course — Web Application & Software Architecture 101

To be honest with you, this is the best course for not only senior
developers but also every software developer out there as it will expand
your thinking process and will you make more confident web developer.
There is a significant discount on the course now, and it’s available
for just $44, original price $79, it’s a bit expensive them Udemy
courses but worth it.

On the other hand, if you like Educative as a platform, you can also buy a subscription for just $17 per month (50% discount), I have one, and I highly recommend you to get.

3. Basics of Software Architecture & Design Patterns in Java

This course is a more low level than the previous two sessions and talks
about software architecture and design patterns, somewhat more concrete
things than abstract design.

The course uses Java programming language to solve problems, which is great for Java developers. Still, the theoretical background is language-independent and useful for all programmers irrespective of their programming languages.

I highly recommend coding out the implementations several times on your own to get a good grasp of it.

It also covers things like SOLID principles and design patterns, which are vital for any good architecture and robust application.

Here is the link to join the course — Basics of Software Architecture & Design Patterns in Java

4. Developer to Architect

This is another fantastic course for all the programmer who wants to become a software architect. In this course, you will learn what the role of a software architect in a team and organization is and why it is so
important.

You will learn about the skills and knowledge required to become a competent software architect and responsibility during each phase of the software development and project life cycle.

Lastly, you will learn one of the most important aspects of being a solution architect: how to design and communicate a solution to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Here is the link to join the course — Developer to Architect

In short, this course is your roadmap to becoming a capable and successful
software architect. Even if you are a software architect, you can also
take this course to further hone your soft skills. If you need more
resources, you can also check out this list of books to improve your Soft Skills as a Programmer and Developer.

5. Clean Architecture: Patterns, Practices, and Principles

This is another excellent Pluralsight course on Software Architecture. In
this course, you will learn about Clean Architecture, if you think what a
clean architecture is, it’s nothing but a set of modern patterns,
practices, and principles for creating a software architecture that is
simple, understandable, flexible, testable, and maintainable.

There is a lot of focus on an organization to write Clean Code and create Clean Architecture, and this course will help you in that direction.

Here is the link to join the course — Clean Architecture: Patterns, Practices, and Principles

This is an introductory course, which means no prerequisites for this
course. However, having essential experience with at least one the C
like a programming language, and basic knowledge of software
architecture is beneficial.

Btw, it’s totally different from the Clean Architecture book by Uncle Bob, which is also a worth reading book for programmers wants to become a software architect.

6. Grokking the System Design Interview

This is one of my favorite courses when it comes to learning Software Design or System design. It’s created to prepare you for the System design
interview, but you can also use it to learn how to approach System
design in general.

The Grokking the System Design Interview, is one of the first courses (or book) that describes the Large Scale Distributed System Design problems in detail. Even if you’ve worked on Distributed Systems before, there are a lot of things that you can learn from this course.

Here is the link to join this course — Grokking the System Design Interview

Authors have created this course to provide you design choices(including pros and cons) so that you can understand the requirement, compare
approaches, and come up with the best solution for the problem in hand.

They are also mindful not to provide a solution at a granularity that’s
appropriate for a 45-minute discussion. This makes the course very
interesting.

Even if you are not preparing for Coding interviews, I suggest you take this course to improve your System design skills. Big thanks to The Educative Team and Fahim ul Haq for creating this awesome course.

7. Software Architecture on Coursera

When it comes to online learning, Coursera is one of the reputed websites
and also one of my favorite places along with Udemy and Pluralsight. It
has some of the best courses on machine learning, Algorithms, and
Software Architecture, and this is one of them.

In this course, you will learn how to represent a software architecture using visual tools like UML, which is very important to communicate the architecture with shareholders as well as developers who will implement it.

You will also learn some of the standard architectures, their
qualities, and tradeoffs. The course also talks about how designs are
evaluated, what makes a good architecture, and architecture can be
improved.

And the best part of the course is that you will do some hands-on practice in the last module by documenting a Java-based Android application
(Capstone Project) with UML diagrams and analyze evaluate the
application’s architecture using the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis
Method (ATAM).

Here is the link to join this course — Software Architecture on Coursera

That’s all about some of the best online courses to learn Software architecture and become Software Architect or Solution Architect. As I have said, the role of a Software architect is significant, and he also needs to do a lot of talking, hence not just subject matter and technologies, he
also needs to be good at soft skills.

It’s a gratifying career, both in terms of pay and work, as you get a lot of limelight and get to talk to both higher and lower levels in your organization like from CEO to Developers and knows most of the things about your application and solution.

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Thanks for reading this article so far. If you found these courses useful in
becoming a software architect or learn software architecture, please
share it with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or
feedback, then please drop a note. cc

P.S. — If you are looking for a free course to learn Java design patterns,
which are also crucial for Software architects, then you can also check
out Java Design Patterns and Architecture course on Udemy. It’s completely free and has loads of useful information on using design patterns for Java programmers.