Actually my team lead's title was "System Engineer". Usually that title is reserved for senior programmer or architect. He was both.

Nowadays if you want to apply for an architect job, J2EE experience is usually a must. A C++ architect's background won't do you any good.

As for C++ itself, to be more specific, it's a programming language. But a programming language can also be called "implementation technology", which is a term also used from an architecture point of view.