Technical Architect - CO - G7

As a Technical Architect (TA), you’ll be responsible for the technical architecture of the digital services in the Cabinet Office. You’ll 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 the government better, which may sometimes involve challenging the status quo.

As a technical architect you will be responsible for the technical design of systems and services. You will use rapid prototyping and desk research to validate the design decisions; and justify and communicate design decisions. You are good at:

• Bridging the gap between the technical and non-technical;
• Turning business problems into technical design;
• Making and guiding decisions;
• Understanding the whole context.

Responsibilities

As a Technical Architect, you’ll:

• Design technical services or plan system integration, selecting necessary platforms and technologies to meet project requirements and user needs;
• Perform architecture deep dives and gap analysis for digital programmes and recommend technical improvements; 
• Develop services by contributing design, technologies and architecting rapid prototypes;
• Provide technical consultancy to both internal and external development teams, ensuring solutions are fit for purpose, whilst meeting time and budget restraints;
• Provide guidance to delivery teams, making sure that the technical direction of travel and delivery are in compliance with various government standards;
• Work with subject matter experts in the Cabinet Office to ensure the digital services are security, and in compliance with security, accessibility and data privacy standards;  
• Be involved in the wider technical community, identifying good practices to adopt and informing technical strategies;
• Enable a positive technical culture, applying agile methods to development and completing quality assurance practices;
• 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 and technical stakeholders;
• Help enable the reuse of patterns, tools, and components across the whole government service landscape.

Person specification

Essential criteria

It’s essential that you have:

• Experience in delivering user-focused services;
• Experience in researching technology best practices; 
• Ability to rapidly prototype;
• 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 produce solution design documentation;
• 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;
• Risk and gap analysis.

Desirable criteria

• Similar technical architecture experience in public sector;
• Experience of legacy migration and re-platforming of digital services;
• Interest in forming government best practices, standards and policies;
• Experience in managing commercial suppliers to deliver digital services;
• Experience in working on Commercial-off-the-shelf and other Cloud solutions.

Additional information:

A minimum 60% of your working time should be spent at your principal workplace. Although requirements to attend other locations for official business will also count towards this level of attendance.

Behaviours

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

• Changing and Improving
• Seeing the Big Picture
• Managing a Quality Service
• Delivering at Pace

We only ask for evidence of these behaviours on your application form:

• Changing and Improving

Technical skills

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

• Architect for the whole context
• Architecture Communication
• Making architectural decisions