Speaker 1: Implementation and integration. Those are the two words that I want you to keep in mind as we talk about becoming a systems architect or systems engineer. What's going on YouTube? My name is Zach and this is IT Career Questions where we help you guys who are looking to get into IT. This is a new series that we are going to be doing that are covering specific job titles within the information technology field. In our previous video we talked about becoming a network engineer and I asked you guys to leave in the comments what you want to see next. This was the most voted one so that's what we're doing today. If there is another job title or something specific that relates to a job in IT that you want to see please put it in the comments below. The one that gets the most thumbs up will be the one that is featured in the next video in this series. So let's get into today and talk about becoming a systems architect or an engineer. And I asked this question out on LinkedIn. I'll put a link to that in the comments below. And one of the things that somebody commented on this post was time. And that wasn't taken too well by some people however it is true. Now that might be kind of a cop-out answer however becoming a systems architect which is very top level within organizations does take time. There's a lot of experience involved in getting to one of these positions. You see to become a systems architect you really need to have a good grasp on technology as a whole in some ways. Now there are very specific architect jobs however you're going to find most often that architect jobs they really kind of are a gambit of many different technologies. But it's understanding how different technologies are integrated into an environment or implemented into an environment and how these technologies interact with each other. So if somebody were to say to you we need more data for you know one of our specific applications. A systems architect might look at this and say okay well let me see how much data we can allocate for this. Let me see how this system upgrade or how upgrading our storage for this will impact other areas within our environment. Now this is kind of one small example however there are definitely a plethora of examples that I could give to you guys but this video would take forever at this point. But to get to the point here is you have to go through implementing different systems. And what I mean by this is as you guys are growing in your different enterprise environments or organizations you guys will implement new technologies. I mean that happens all the time on a year-to-year basis sometimes much more frequent than that sometimes not as frequent as that. But as you guys are implementing new technologies into your environments it's important to understand and document of course for your sake how these new technologies interact with your current technologies in your environment. So it's really having that that grasp of how everything talks to each other how everything can in some way affect each other. It's really important to understand how these different technologies talk with each other as new technologies come into play. Going through different implementations and integrations of new softwares applications technologies that takes time. So as you're going through your career it's really important if something comes up within your organization where you can be part of implementing a new technology that you step forward and you volunteer your services for that. Because what you're going to want to do is get as much experience as you can implementing new technologies because that is going to greatly help your cause in the future of becoming a systems architect. Engineering now is somewhat different. So an architect has a very grandiose look at an infrastructure. They understand how these different technologies interact with each other. They understand you know the requirements that are needed for these technologies but they might not actually do that implementation themselves. You're going to have systems engineers who specialize in some of these different technologies who actually do the implementation. They actually understand at a more technical level how these different technologies work and function. So they may be very specialized in some of these things. So an engineer will actually do much of the work in integrating these different and new technologies into an environment where an architect will in some way oversee how these things are being implemented and making sure that we have all of the requirements to implement these technologies. So I hope that kind of makes sense. I hope we kind of define the two of these right there. The most important thing that everybody's really said is the experience. The experience is going to be huge for you because becoming an engineer or an architect is going to take time. So again make sure you guys volunteer at any point that you can because that's going to greatly help your success in becoming an engineer or an architect. Now of course there are a plethora of certifications that can help you guys along the way. You know your MCSE certifications from Microsoft are going to be a great help especially like leaning more towards anything cloud related. So Azure, AWS those are going to be a great help. Even having a lot of networking experience so something like your CCNA is going to be helpful for you. Any type of virtualization so anything from VMware is going to be helpful for you as well. Linux of course is going to be a huge one. These are just to name a few. Now these aren't the set in stone certifications that you absolutely need to get. These are just kind of a touch. Let's touch on these really quick because they can definitely help you. So if you're looking to become a systems engineer or a systems architect please keep in mind that you're going to have to get some experience you guys. It does take a little bit of experience but once you get to that level these are very high paying jobs and they are definitely something that you know once you reach that level you're going to be very satisfied with the work that you're doing. So I hope this video helps and maybe clears up some questions that you may have had about one of these positions. If there's anything that I missed, which it does happen I'm not perfect, please leave a comment below and share what you feel like people should know to land one of these positions. If there's another job title again that you guys want to see make sure you leave it in the comments. The one that gets the most thumbs up will be the next one featured on this channel. I hope you guys appreciate this. That's all we got for today's video. As always, take it easy.