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Systems engineering in the software industry (programming.dev)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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My last job was at a company that designed and built satellites to order. There was a well defined process for this, and systems engineers were a big part of it. Maybe my experience there is distorting my perspective, but it seems to me that any sufficiently complex project needs to include systems engineering, even if the person doing that is not called a systems engineer. Yet as far as I can tell, it isn't really a thing in the software industry. When I look at job postings and "about us" blog posts about how a company operates, I don't see systems engineering mentioned. Am I just not seeing it, is it called something else, or is the majority of the industry somehow operating without it?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

"Principal Engineer" or "Principal System Engineer" is what you call it in places that don't say some variant of "Architect"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

my guess is the software equivalent is the architect role - basically someone high level that doesn’t code much but does design the overall way that systems interact (or, to put it redundantly, designs the architecture of the full system)

however i don’t know if this term is en vogue as much anymore except for very large scale businesses (i would bet money that banks employ architects, for example)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If you described what a "systems engineer" did that'd be a big help.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Systems engineering is an established discipline, one you can get a degree in. It’s not just a random term I’m making up. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_engineering

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

No one said it’s made up, just that we don’t know what it is because it’s a term for big (and maybe hardware-oriented) industries. Most devs will never touch this in their lives.

From your link, it seems that the "software architect" is the closest equivalent. He must have a broad knowledge in a bit of everything from the code to talking with clients in order to make good decisions for everyone, and make sure that a good path is followed by everyone.

Last but not least, this book seems interesting and gives an overview of what I said: https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Software-Architecture-Comprehensive-Characteristics/dp/1492043451