technically challenging role on the WS job market

Imagine a tech lead role that requires substantial architecture + implementation capabilities.

Q1: are there such roles on the market?
A1: yes I have seen some people playing such roles.

In our discussion, we often say “this job spec seems to be tough, but once hired, just about anyone can do the job.” or “Other people in the team are probably mediocre so the new hire need not be as good as the job spec says.”

In SG, a trading sys developer is paid higher than an Oracle DBA, or a manager at HP, or a system architect at some government companies (I know such friends), so it’s easy to think that trading dev skill set requirement must be significantly higher than the average java developer. But I believe just about any smart java developer can do the job.

Now back to my answer A1 above. Some positions on the market are indeed that challenging. How do we tell which one is? If I know which one is, I could either avoid such a “hot” job, or grab such a “hot” job.