AWS Technical Architect - Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government - G7

Location

Bristol, Darlington, London, Manchester, Wolverhampton

About the job

Job summary

We are MHCLG   

Here at the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG), we work on things that make a real difference to people’s lives. Whether it's through the homes we live in, the work of our local councils, or the communities we’re all part of, our work is at the top of the political agenda. We have ambitious and far-reaching outcomes to achieve this year and, if you’re thinking of joining us, there’s never been a more exciting time.

As the AWS Technical Architect, you will own the technical architecture of the department’s AWS platform, providing clear architectural direction and assurance across a diverse portfolio of digital services. Working in close partnership with Enterprise Architects, you will translate departmental IT strategy, target architecture, and roadmaps into a coherent, secure, and operable AWS platform that meets government standards for security, resilience, and value for money. You will provide architectural leadership to multidisciplinary delivery teams, ensuring the platform enables consistent, reusable, and compliant digital service delivery. This includes setting architectural patterns and guardrails, supporting design decisions, and ensuring services are aligned to cloud, security, and operational best practice across their full lifecycle—from rapid prototyping through to large-scale, production-grade systems.

The team operates in a fast‑paced environment with a high degree of autonomy. You will be self‑motivated, comfortable with ambiguity, and motivated by solving complex technical challenges. You will enjoy exploring new approaches and technologies, responding quickly to emerging requirements, and supporting teams working in Agile ways.

Find out more about our Digital teams and what they are working on through our MHCLG Digital blog.  Please note that MHCLG do not offer visa sponsorship and applicants will need a valid visa for the duration of your employment.

Job description

As an AWS Technical Architect, you'll:

• Own and evolve the AWS platform architecture, including landing zones, identity and access management, networking, logging, monitoring and guardrails
• Work closely with Enterprise Architects to align AWS platform decisions with the departmental IT strategy, target architecture and architectural roadmaps
• Translate enterprise architecture principles and strategic direction into practical platform standards, patterns and reusable components
• Lead architectural decision making for the AWS platform, documenting decisions and managing trade offs across risk, cost, operability and performance
• Provide architectural assurance and guidance to delivery teams, ensuring solutions align to platform standards and broader enterprise direction
• Embed security, resilience and compliance by design in partnership with cyber security and operations teams
• Develop and maintain Infrastructure as Code patterns and "golden paths" that enable safe self service by delivery teams
• Identify platform risks, constraints and opportunities and feed these back into enterprise level strategy and roadmap discussions
• Mentor engineers and architects and contribute to communities of practice across the organisation

Person specification

As an AWS Technical Architect, you'll have:

• Extensive experience (minimum 2 years) designing and operating AWS platforms in an enterprise or government environment
• Experience owning platform architecture and aligning technical decisions to enterprise strategy and roadmaps
• Strong stakeholder management skills, including effective collaboration with Enterprise Architects and senior technical leaders
• Hands on experience using Infrastructure as Code to implement and evolve cloud platforms
• Proven ability to embed security, resilience and operability into platform design