As far as I’m concerned they’re the people that run around flooding every meeting with words that have already been said by the developers, and by extension do not need to be said.
Big orgs with lots of outsourcing, architects are supposed to police the result to make sure it's semi decent. But since they've long since gave up doing any real work, they tend to be people who buy really expensive crap to cover their arse.
In smaller orgs, it can almost be just a lead dev with a fancy title.
Rarely does the title seem appopriate, but some of the folks with the title are good regardless.
Its taken a while to get to this point, with a fair bit of pushing back on more traditional project management stuff, but I’m ridiculously happy with what I get to do for a living now. That was definitely not true when I was in a pure technical management role, where 80% of my week was spent in meetings.
End of the day, if you're happy and delivering value your title doesn't really matter. But it might when you want to move role in the future, so you might want to keep one eye on what the market is branding you as.
Fow what it's worth, I'm glad you're happy with your role. :)
*or maybe just changed, who am I to decide what words mean