Lead Technical Architect

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Job description

Are you ready to join a Government department undergoing an exciting and significant Digital Transformation? Cabinet Office are seeking the appointment of a permanent Lead Technical Architect to help support the ambition to make UK Government digital services the best in the world.

This role sits within the Change and Deliver team in the CDIO. They are responsible for leading and supporting the delivery of excellent digital services and digital transformation changes with business units across the Cabinet Office, acting as an internal agency. This is an exciting opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects from high profile public-facing sites to internal digital transformation projects. The variety, scope and impact of these projects is unrivalled.

Job description

As a Lead Technical Architect (TA), you'll share the responsibility for the digital transformation of government. You'll have a vision for government services and communicate this to technical and non-technical audiences alike. You'll ensure a project's overall technical design meets user needs and acceptance criteria, whilst conforming to time and budget constraints. You'll thrive using agile methods and enjoy working collaboratively with departments and multidisciplinary teams. Above all, you'll want to make government better, which may sometimes involve challenging the status quo.

As a Lead Technical Architect, you'll:

work with Architecture colleagues to support the full range of CDIO responsibilities

lead a team of Developers, Site Reliability Engineers and Technical Architects within CDIO Change & Deliver who will report to you

design technical services or plan system integration, selecting necessary platforms and technologies to meet project requirements and user needs

provide technical leadership and consultancy to both internal and external development teams, ensuring solutions are fit for purpose, whilst meeting time and budget restraints

build and maintain technical roadmaps, looking ahead for future opportunities or blockers, and ensuring decisions by development teams align with the strategy

encourage communication across multiple development teams to identify strategic requirements and dependencies

help develop services by contributing design, technologies and architecting rapid prototypes

be involved in the wider technical community, identifying good practices to adopt and sharing your experiences, eg through blog posts, tech talks at conferences

enable a positive technical culture, applying agile methods to development and completing quality assurance practices

mentor Developers, Site Reliability Engineers and Technical Architects of all levels

advise delivery/product managers on the estimated effort and technical implications of current user stories, as well as those in the backlog

form relationships with external suppliers

help enable the reuse of patterns, tools, and components across the whole government service landscape

interview new candidates joining CDIO, specifically within the technical community

define tasks and management of the architecture

It's essential that you have:

experience leading technical teams and delivering user-focused services

experience in researching technology best practices

ability to learn about adapt quickly to new technologies and trends

deep understanding of a AWS ecosystem and/or other public cloud platform

awareness of emerging security issues

ability to read and understand solution design documentation

ability to rapidly prototype

understanding of how to prioritise work in a fast, customer-centric environment

understanding of agile environments, continual delivery techniques and devops cultures

understanding of how to influence senior management and communicate with both technical and non-technical audiences

product transformation - Strategic design, review and implementation.

risk and gap analysis

roadmap definition

creation of As/Is and To/Be architecture designs

replatforming of whole architectures onto new hosting providers

technical architecture guidance

understanding technology limitations

cost and capacity planning

Desirable skills and experience:

a view of technology as an enabler of great digital services

an eagerness to influence how digital services are delivered, both in CDIO and across government

an awareness of how to budget in an on-demand environment and an understanding of legal implications

experience of enterprise integration tools and extract, transformation and load (ETL) tools

experience designing and implementing secure systems

experience mentoring technical staff and managing stakeholders

experience working in a dynamic organisation with rapidly expanding users and changing requirements

interest in forming government best practices, standards and policies

experience initiating projects, participating in workshops to gather user needs and building prototypes

a willingness to travel to client locations

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

Leading and communicating

Delivering at pace

Collaborating and partnering

The process:

This is a rolling campaign. Sifting of CV's and interviews will be held weekly. Please submit your CV immediately.

Applicants will be required to provide an up to date CV and supporting statement (up to 1,250 words) detailing how you meet the requirements and behaviours listed above. You will also provide a completed diversity form.

Please email your CV and we'll provide instructions on supporting statement and diversity form.

Cabinet Office are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity in our organisation. You can find out more about our commitment to diversity and inclusion and read our equal opportunities statement on our Diversity and Inclusion page.

Security Clearance

Please note that this role requires SC clearance, which would normally require 5 years' UK residency in the past 5 years. This is not an absolute requirement but supplementary checks may be required where individuals have not lived in the UK for the required period. This may mean that your security clearance (and therefore your appointment) will take longer or, in some cases, not be possible.