Architect
Also known as: Project Architect, Architectural Designer, Design Architect
Design buildings and structures that are functional, safe, sustainable, and visually inspiring.
Salary Range
The highest-paid specialization or seniority level for architects.
About 1 in 50 reaches this level
About 124,600 architects (BLS Employment Projections, SOC 17-1011, 2025); managing principals at large firms earn ~$300K (range $250-350K). Of the 19,000+ US firms only about a quarter have 10 or more staff (AIA 2024), and the ~600-900 large ones (est.) have 2-4 managing principals each — roughly 1,200-3,600 people (est.), about 2%. Some star architects earn more but that is entrepreneurial income, not a standard career trajectory.
Salary data based on 2025 BLS, Glassdoor, and industry reports. Actual compensation varies by location, experience, and employer.
How to Become One
This career typically requires a bachelor's degree. Here are the top colleges for it:
Cost to Qualify
Two different routes lead to this job, and they cost very different amounts. Neither one is the answer on its own.
The five-year Bachelor of Architecture is the most common way into architecture, BLS says, and it is a complete professional degree on its own: you finish ready to start the paid experience and exams for a licence. At a public university in your own state it runs about $93,000 for the five years. Virginia Tech charges Virginia residents $17,087 a year in tuition and mandatory fees for 2026-27, plus $1,500 a year that every architecture student pays. Out of state it is far more: Virginia Tech charges non-residents $40,180 a year before the architecture fee. At a private school it runs about $375,000: Cornell's five-year B.Arch. costs $73,946 a year in tuition plus $1,024 in mandatory fees. On top of the degree, NCARB charges $105 to open a Record, $105 a year to keep it active, and $263 per ARE exam division, $1,578 for all six.
The other route is a four-year bachelor's in architecture, which does not qualify you for a licence by itself, followed by a two-year Master of Architecture. The master's alone costs about $82,000 at a public school in your own state: Michigan's Taubman College charges Michigan residents $40,764 a year in tuition plus $332 in mandatory fees (non-residents pay $62,290 in tuition). At a private school it costs about $127,000: Washington University in St. Louis charges $62,804 a year in tuition plus $930 in required fees for its two-year M.Arch 2. That is on top of whatever the four-year bachelor's cost. The whole route takes six years and usually costs more than the five-year BArch: about $139,000 at in-state public prices, adding a typical $56,000 public bachelor's from our college list. The two-year master's is only open if your bachelor's was in architecture, and WashU calls a place on it 'highly selective'. With any other bachelor's it is a three-year M.Arch instead. The same NCARB fees apply: $105 to open a Record, $105 a year to keep it active, and $1,578 for the six ARE divisions.
Sticker price, not what most people pay — scholarships, aid and in-state status all move it. Room and board is shown separately on each college's page.
AI Risk Assessment
Architects design buildings and are legally responsible for them: they meet clients, develop the design, make sure it meets building codes and safety rules, produce the detailed drawings contractors build from, and oversee construction. Licensing and legal liability mean a person has to stand behind the work, and AI cannot do that. AI is arriving in the design office, though. In a survey of firm leaders published by the American Institute of Architects in September 2026, 48% said their firm is currently engaging with AI, but only 7% had a formal AI training program, and among firms using AI, 76% said productivity had stayed about the same so far (22% said it had gone up substantially). BLS says architectural design is becoming more efficient thanks to better building-modeling software and AI, and that the gains let architects take on more of the building process.
The risk is concentrated in the production work that junior staff do. A 2025 Microsoft Research study measured how much of each job's tasks AI chatbots can help with, using 200,000 real conversations. Architects came out in the top 40% of 785 jobs, but architectural and civil drafters, who turn designs into detailed drawings, came out in the top 26%. BLS projects architect jobs to grow 4% from 2025 to 2035, about as fast as the average for all jobs, with about 6,900 openings a year. BLS reads AI mostly as a productivity boost, and so far the survey data agrees. We rate it 3 rather than 2 because of how people enter the profession. BLS says every state requires a paid internship, generally about three years, before a graduate can take the licensing exam, and interns spend much of that time preparing drawings and construction documents. That is the part of the work AI is most likely to shrink. The Microsoft researchers also warn that a high score does not by itself mean job losses. Right now, the bigger problem for new architects is the economy: AIA's index of architecture firm billings was still falling in August 2026.
What would change this score. If firms start hiring fewer junior architects because AI produces construction drawings, this goes to 4. If AI stays a helper and firms keep hiring graduates at the same rate once the building market recovers, 2 becomes possible.
Sources
Ratings reflect a 10-year outlook based on 2025-2026 research, weighted toward entry-level impact. Individual outcomes will vary.
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