Principal Cloud Architect - Scottish Government - G7

Location

Edinburgh, Scotland, EH11 3XD

About the job

Job summary

Can you help shape the future of Scotland’s digital public services by leading the design of secure, scalable, and forward-thinking technology solutions?

As Principal Cloud Architect, you’ll join the Architecture team within Information & Technology Services (iTECS), part of the Scottish Government’s Digital Directorate. iTECS provides corporate ICT services to the Scottish Government and over 50 public sector bodies, supporting around 22,000 users across Scotland. Our mission is to deliver robust, secure, and innovative technology aligned with national digital priorities. 

In this role, you will lead the design, integration, and governance of Microsoft cloud platforms such as Azure and M365. You will act as a subject matter expert, shaping technical roadmaps, ensuring security and operational compliance, and guiding teams in applying best practice architecture standards. Working closely with product, engineering, and wider DDaT colleagues, you will ensure that services and systems are robust, scalable, and aligned with organisational strategy, supporting the evolving needs of Scottish public services. 

Job description

• Present recommendations for technologies or system improvements to support project goals, based on IT knowledge and analysis of business and system needs. 
• Evaluate the success of integrated solutions, identifying best practices and lessons learned. 
• Act as a key contributor to architecture governance activities, ensuring the adoption of best practice and appropriate technology architecture standards. 
• Contribute to the overall technical strategy and roadmap for the department within your area of expertise. 
• Own the technical roadmap for services across a defined domain. 
• Develop and document technical designs for the integration and implementation of technology solutions, working across DDaT and wider business teams. 
• Ensure designs meet required security and operational standards. 
• Act as a subject matter expert, ensuring recommendations and designs align with wider organisational and cross-government strategies. 
• Own designated digital components, ensuring their design and implementation align with broader architectural patterns and direction. 

Person specification

Success Profile 

Success profiles are specific to each job, and they include the mix of experience, skills and behaviours candidates will be assessed on. 

Experience:  

1. Lead Criteria 1: Demonstrating a detailed knowledge of technical requirements to implement, design and manage a range of Microsoft technologies including 365, Azure and Power Platform technologies. 
2. Lead Criteria 2: Designing complex technology solutions recognising time, cost and quality targets and constraints. 
3. Providing technical leadership and expertise on large projects or critical workstreams in larger programmes. 
4. Anticipating and advising on future technology that present opportunities for the SCOTS Microsoft Platform. 

Experience is assessed at sift, along with a more in-depth assessment at interview. 

Technical Skills: 

This role is aligned to the Technical Architect job role within the Architecture job family. 

You can find out more about the skills required, here.

These skills are assessed by technical assessment, designed to represent the role. Candidates reaching this stage will receive a Technical Assessment Candidate Pack which outlines the specific skills to be assessed, plus the method of assessment.  

Behaviours: 

• Managing a Quality Service - (Level 4) 
• Making Effective Decisions - (Level 4) 

You can find out more about Success Profiles Behaviours, here. 

Behaviours are assessed at interview. Full details will be shared in advance with all candidates invited to this stage.