Santosh Vaza svaza

Principal Engineer → Solution Architect: Skills Map + Upgrade Plan

Goal: standardize how you think, communicate, and de-risk architecture so you can drive bigger outcomes with less friction.

1) Core architect skill stack (what you should be strong at)

A) Architecture communication (where most architects fail)

If you can’t communicate the design, you don’t have a design.

🗺️ Roadmap: Principal Engineer to Azure Solution Architect (2026-2027)

Current Role: Principal Engineer (App/Dev Focus)
Target Role: Enterprise/Platform Architect (Infrastructure, Governance & Strategy Focus)
Core Philosophy: "Mechanics over Magic." Shift focus from building code to governing the ecosystem.

📚 Phase 0: Foundations & The "Architect's Mindset"

This runs continuously alongside the technical phases.

6-Month Roadmap — Expert in RAG & Enterprise LLM Solutions (Azure + on‑prem)

https://www.louisbouchard.ai/from-zero-to-hero-with-llms/

Goal: Design, build, secure, and operate production-grade RAG systems integrating enterprise data, using vector DBs, and applying adapters as needed.

Month 0 — Foundations (1–2 weeks)

Outcome: Understand LLM fundamentals, embeddings, chunking, RAG architecture, and prompt basics.

🎯 Minimalist AI/ML Learning Plan for Principal Software Engineers & Architects

This curated list focuses on essential AI/ML knowledge to help you architect, lead, and guide AI/ML initiatives, without going deep into model-building.

🧠 1. Understand AI at a Strategic Level

✅ AI for Everyone – Andrew Ng (Coursera)

Platform: Coursera

🎯 Azure Architect Expert Roadmap (Enhanced with Relevant Courses)

Objective

Become proficient in designing, implementing, and managing solutions on Microsoft Azure, focusing on both enterprise architecture and cloud infrastructure.

Prerequisites:

Strong background in cloud computing concepts.
Experience in software development, especially with .NET technologies.
Knowledge of networking, security, and storage concepts.

.NET Solution Architect - In-Depth Learning Roadmap

Phase 1: Core Technical Expertise

1. .NET Fundamentals & Advanced Concepts

✅ C# 12, LINQ, Async Programming, Memory Management
✅ .NET Core & .NET 8 (ASP.NET Core, API development, Dependency Injection)
✅ Clean Code, SOLID Principles, Design Patterns

📚 Courses:

ML Starter Roadmap for a .NET & Azure Developer

🎯 Goal:

To understand core ML concepts, build simple models, and integrate them with .NET & Azure.

Phase 1: ML Fundamentals Without the Overhead (Month 1)

1️⃣ Basics of ML & AI

Machine Learning Specialization by Andrew Ng (Course 1: Supervised ML)

🎯 Generative AI Roadmap for Intelligent Application Development (With Azure Integration)

Objective

Leverage Generative AI and pre-trained ML models using APIs/SDKs (OpenAI, Azure, HuggingFace, etc.) to:

Build intelligent business apps
Solve real-world problems
Integrate AI features into existing backends

	public class Solution {
	public int EdgeScore(int[] edges) {
	long[] deg = new long[edges.Length];
	long max = -1;
	for(int i = 0; i < edges.Length; i++)
	{
	deg[edges[i]]+=i;
	max = Math.Max(max, deg[edges[i]]);
	}

	public class Solution {
	public int ArithmeticTriplets(int[] nums, int diff) {
	var set = new HashSet<string>();

	int i = 0;
	int n = nums.Length-1;
	int c = 0;

	while(i <= n-2)
	{