This is the fastest-growing $100K+ job in the country

Glassdoor released the September version of its Local Pay Reports today, showing that within the nearly 85 jobs the site tracks monthly, “Solutions Architect” had the highest year-over-year U.S. median base pay growth among the highest paying positions.

While Software Engineer and Professor weren’t far behind, the Solutions Architect position has a hefty median base pay of $102,184, up 3.7% from a year ago.

Dr. Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist of Glassdoor, commented on the findings in a statement.

“The reports show that more sophisticated technology jobs like solutions architects and web designers are increasingly in demand because their mix of hard and soft skills allow them to navigate today’s fast-changing tech landscape. As the need for single-skilled developers like java developers and web developers has waned, so has wage growth for those positions,” he said.

The responsibilities of the position might seem unclear from the “solutions architect” title alone, so here’s what you should know about what it takes to do the job.

Wait, what is a solutions architect?

Mondo, an IT, tech, and digital marketing staffing agency, describes a solutions architect as someone who should be hired when a company needs to sort though and enhance “the overall computer systems architecture” of a company, who can can pick out and link all pieces of its computer network and recommend solutions to help it run more smoothly. They reportedly can also help with “storage and compliance” problems.

But this firsthand account from a former solutions architect makes the job seem a little more wide-ranging, even though this is only one isolated example.

Daniel O’Leary, former Solutions Architect for cloud storage company Box, told TechCrunch what a typical meeting or day looks like for him in a 2014 Inside Jobs video interview.

“I might be functioning as a therapist— just helping people talk, and actually, for the first time in maybe a very long time, sharing why things are important to them. I might be actually documenting a process that has never been analyzed, and understanding what that means. And then very frequently, it’s digging into your existing enterprise technology stack, your other cloud services, and from a governing standpoint, figuring out where Box fits in. And in any given meeting, it is a mix of all three of those,” he said.

O’Leary reportedly also has conversations with clients about their experience with Box and comes up with personalized “solutions” for issues they’ve run into.

Other high-paying jobs with the most wage growth since last year

Glassdoor’s list of the highest-paying jobs in the September Local Pay Reports also featured Professor and Software Engineer, among others. The former has a median base pay of $87,244, up 2.6% since last September. The latter has a median base pay of $85,806, up 2.7% since last September.

Glassdoor reported that positions with the most wage growth “aren’t always the ones with the highest earning potential.”

Taking a look at the bigger picture overall, the report also showed that median base pay creeped up 1.8% from one year ago to $51,491 yearly, based on salaries on the site.

That isn’t a drastic change.

But Glassdoor continues, saying that although 1.8% in salary growth beats “the revised 1.6 percent pace last month,” it’s far below the 3.5% in January 2017. Based on today’s pace, Glassdoor says, “it will take America roughly 40 years to double the nation’s median base pay.”

This article This is the fastest-growing $100K+ job in the country appeared first on Ladders.