Where do architects fit on your software team? Is this a leadership position in your org?

Software architects play an instrumental role in setting the technical direction, making design decisions, and ensuring that the system’s architecture aligns with business goals. In SAP world, solution architects bridge the gap during the discover-design-deploy phase and propel functional and development teams to follow best practices, leverage the right technologies, and build scalable and modular systems (via the proper fit gap of as-is and to-be landscapes).

At Accenture, architects often hold leadership positions, as they are responsible not only for the technical roadmap but also for influencing project success, managing risks, and ensuring the overall quality of deliverables. They frequently collaborate with clients to understand business needs, translate abstract business requirements into technical requirements, and lead the design of solutions that address complex challenges. These roles demand a blend of technical expertise (mentors for developers on new emerging technologies) and soft skills, as architects must communicate effectively with stakeholders across both technical and business domains.  Hope this helps.

Architects operate at different levels in the organisation - I would argue that they are all leaders, however they may not necessarily all occupy senior positions in the org hierarchy.

Enterprise architects are identifying and aligning technologies to capabilities in order to solve business and structure issues and opportunities, and working with C suite to align investment accordingly.

Domain architects are the SMEs in their chosen specialisation and identify and adopt given technologies to make them consumable by others in their org (think platforms)

Solution architects (or Architecture Owners) within agile teams - take the available componentry and use within their long lived products/solutions, provide feedback to the domain architects if there are missing or sub-optimal components, and they also provide technical direction and development to their engineers They should be practitioners coding and leading their teams.

The architect role in our organization is an advanced level within the position profile. It's not unique to software development.  The architect is a role that provides technical leadership throughout the team.

Architects have a vital role in leading change within the software development lifecycle. They lead change in many aspects depending on the style (Enterprise, Solution, Data, Infrastructure), however the area they may lead will differ and the position they occupy in relation to the team. 

For instance, you may find a Solution Architect within a development team leading the design of the build. On the other hand you may find an Enterprise Architect providing guidance outside of the team as a dedicated function within the organisation. Further, it's also common to have a "Head of Enterprise Architecture" taking both a leadership and managerial role, often reporting to the CTO. 

What is common is that by putting consideration to where different aspects of architecture fit into your organisation can add quality to the lifecycle and considerations around governance and both functional and non-functional concerns.

Architects play a vital role in designing and securing the software , we can say they have leadership position as they are involved from inception of the project till the maintenance and support .