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

Yes it is- we believe in decentralised decision making - architect is a skill and should be fought to everyone in your team. The role of architect is to help developers make the right decision, set-up best practices and focus on enterprise architecture and latest tech.

By definition, I would consider any architect to be in a leadership position. If the organizational culture leans towards hierarchy, this might be an issue as far as architects having impact. In those cases, I find that it's often not feasible to deal with this purely from the role perspective, but rather from a process or ceremony, effectively reinforcing the word of the Architect. A Design Authority/Architecture Review Board, and integration into Definition of Ready, or similar gates can be useful here, in my experience.

In organizations leaning less towards hierarchy, I tend to recommend extending the leadership model of the organization to architects, but without burdening them with direct reports. In my current organization, this provides guidance on leadership behaviors, which are generally very applicable to Architects. E.g. "Push limititations", "Manage ambiguity" and "Challenge with empathy.".

This is simple, works well, and creates a shared language between leaders, both line managers and architects.

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.