Thanks for the replies. That's a really discouraging view :ermm: 😉
"SSA" here stands for "senior systems analyst". At my present company it's stapled to every developer regardless of skill level or specialization.
Titles seem to mean a lot in Australia, because employers use the average salary for a title to figure out what the market rate for a position should be. There's not much room for individual ability.
The company I work for is, IMO, "big enough". Not if you compare it to huge global behemoths of course, but we have 2200 active users on the 550GB primary OLTP database at any one time, clusters and VMs everywhere, dynamix CRM, biztalk, K2, two data warehouses, highly distributed locations and mobile services, patridges in pear trees.
I'd expect to be hiring at best a solid Level II SQL Dev, certainly not a data architect.
I don't know what a "level II SQL Dev" is assumed to know, and it's very difficult for me to try to describe how much I do or don't know, so I'm not sure if it's fair. But level II sounds rather low. As a complete guess I'd expect someone with "level II" knowledge to be able to write their TSQL without needing their hand held. I, on the other hand, am the one in the position of "holding the hand" of other developers who themselves have years of experience, usually (but not always) with respect to anything data-related, and particularly with respect to anything directly in SQL Server.
Is there an implication there that "data architect" is the next step after "DBA"? Because I guide our data architect....
I wouldn't consider myself a generalist, I'd consider myself a SQL specialst who also has a significant amount of past experience with OO languages.