Head of Architecture - GDS - G6

The Government Digital Service (GDS) is the digital centre of government — we are responsible for setting, leading and delivering the vision for a modern digital government.

• Our priorities are to drive a modern digital government, by:
• joining up public sector services
• harnessing the power of AI for the public good
• strengthening and extending our digital and data public infrastructure
• elevating leadership and investing in talent
• funding for outcomes and procuring for growth and innovation
• committing to transparency and driving accountability

We are home to the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (I.AI), the world-leading GOV.UK and at the forefront of coordinating the UK’s geospatial strategy and activity. We lead the Government Digital and Data function and champion the work of digital teams across government.

We’re part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and employ more than 1,000 people all over the UK, with hubs in Manchester, London and Bristol.

The Government Digital Service is where talent translates into impact. From your first day, you’ll be working with some of the world’s most highly-skilled digital professionals, all contributing their knowledge to make change on a national scale.

Join us for rewarding work that makes a difference across the UK. You'll solve some of the nation’s highest-priority digital challenges, helping millions of people access services they need.

The Product & Services Directorate (P&S) within GDS is responsible for the P&S Ai enabled app and common component products that provide shared systems, technology and processes, making it quicker and cheaper to build great public services that are consistent for users:

• AI-enabled App: building a personalised and proactive relationship with users, making it easier to interact with government 
• Pay: enabling public bodies to take online payment
• Notify: allowing public sector organisations to easily send high volume emails, text messages and letters to users
• Forms: a digital form builder which allows anyone in government to easily create accessible online forms in minutes, without technical knowledge.

Job description

As a GDS Head of Technical Architecture for Personalisation, you’ll be responsible for designing and driving the technical strategy for future critical national infrastructure (CNI) working in collaboration with other GDS heads of architecture and senior technical leadership groups.  As a Head of technical architecture for personalisation you’ll set direction, and be responsible for designing and implementing the technical and architectural requirements relating to the personalisation of the P&S & GOV.UK programmes. You’ll do this to deliver on the GDS wide strategic needs, while ensuring the platform is secure, available and resilient at scale for the future. This is critical to such an important part of our national communications infrastructure. 

This role is suited to someone who has experience of driving / delivering enterprise level transformation projects. We are moving beyond a static publishing architecture to one that will support structured and personalised content to facilitate channel agnostic consumption and re-use of content in personalised situations; the use of data and data science for insight and automation; data exchange and account models to make interactions with government simpler; and a two-way dialogue between the government, and citizens and businesses.

We would expect to see demonstrable experience of developing architecture to cope with scaled demands, looking across the importance of user identification, delegated authority, security, and privacy. We would look for evidence of successfully leading technical communities and high-performing agile teams to deliver against strategic aims in similar transformational projects at significant scale.

You’ll be part of the P&S programme team alongside GDS leadership team to inform, substantiate, and drive forward strategy, and how this manifests in our plans and roadmaps. As part of this role, you’ll lead the personalised architecture community within P&S, which includes the responsibility for developing the team to support higher-level technical and architecture capabilities within the programme.

As the Head of Technical Architecture for Personalisation you’ll:

• lead by example, be a visible leader who takes responsibility and acts as a role model
• develop the future CNI architecture strategy, and alignment to wider GDS architecture system 
• lead the personalisation architecture function within P&S
• be accountable for technical capacity planning within the programme, to support both tactical and strategic needs
• be accountable for the security, availability, and resilience of the personalised services that P&S builds
• ensure engineering standards and guidelines are clearly established and communicated, making sure these are fit for purpose, and aligned with existing and emerging GDS principles and standards
• help define and lead the implementation of GDS principles and standards - working with colleagues right across GDS to do so
• work with other discipline heads to ensure that all technology and products have an effective ownership and operational model for their ongoing support
• provide programme representation in GDS senior technology forums, and contribute to broader GDS technical strategy
• support the wellbeing of the broader technical community within [directorate/programme]
• be taking responsibility for developing others, through line management and/or mentoring
• be involved in helping recruiting technical architects and other senior technologists, where appropriate, helping sift and interview
• act as a digital ambassador across government, supporting recruitment, identifying good practices for GDS to adopt and share experiences, e.g. through blog posts, tech talks at conferences etc

Person specification

We’re interested in people who:

• have experience in delivery of enterprise level transformation and multi-year programmes, defining and ensuring organisational and technical needs, capabilities, and processes
• have significant experience with designing, and delivering personalisation of consumer facing products and services at scale
• can build, lead and developing high performing architecture teams 
• have experience of developing and managing high performing, agile, technical teams and creating an inclusive, collaborative culture across boundaries and locations
• have experience in delivering at pace, in dynamic and challenging environments
• have wide experience of designing and developing service-based platform architectures
• can demonstrate experience with leading teams to design and build data and machine learning infrastructure to provide valuable insight
• have experience designing, building and running large-scale content management systems, utilising structured content to deliver information to users over a range of platforms and devices
• have experience with the concepts of identity management and how these can be applied to both individuals and businesses
• are passionate about the potential of technology and what it can enable in our personalisation strategy, with a keen awareness of current technology trends, and the ability to see the potential application of new technologies to user value