r2i forum

As I am planning to R2I a telecom equipment vendor company started interviewing me for PM-SQA Role.I have strong 15+ years on telecom domain experience. During 2nd Interview Engg Director asked to to see if I am interested in QA-Arechitect Role. I feel that my skills are matching with what they are looking for.When asked about the level of the position he mentioned that this technical Role is Individual Contributor Role with direct reporting to Him(i.e Engg Director). Reasoning he gave was that I have strong domain knowledge which may be lacking currently in test organization as most of the people they have has limited exposure to the domain knowledge which I posses.They have QA team of around 65 people and may grow to 85+ people in next few months.

I will apprecitae if someone can provide more insight into following questions which I have.

(a)I have not seen QA-Architect Role in my domain(telecom infrasturcture products for carriers like Sprint,Verizon, AT&T, Vodaphone etc).Any one has more idea on this Role.

(b)What about growth prospectus in QA-Architect Role v/s QA-PM Role?

(c) Is it possible that QA-Architect role may pay much less salary that QA-PM Role?( I have not reached to this stage so far in my negotiation)

(d)In long term I would like to pursue a carrer as independent technology consultant or in CTO office for large telecom carriers (like Reliance,Bharti,BSNL,AT&T etc) to work on new telecom/wireless technology evaluations. Which position will better suite to pursue my goal?


Thanks in Advance

abc_xyz

I havent seen many QA architect positions. The one that you might be intersted in is QA practice manager. Anyways the role(titles can be misleading) involves staying abreast of technology, bidding for new contracts, architecture decisions, developing people.

This offers you the best of both worlds. Architecture and management. Such roles should be available with major IT companies.

Does a PM make more than a Architect ?

It is now doubtful that a pure people managing PM would make more. As it is there is a lack of technically qualified people at the higher level. But then organizational dynamics is different at different places and most places would expect an architect to report to a PM.

Personally i want to be in technical role. There are career paths all the way to becoming a CTO and even leading product development companies to implement a new product.

Challenge is if you are in consulting in India....and stay technical with your experience.... u will probably report to some guy who has half your experience...and u must ask yourself NOW how you can deal with that if and when it happens.